I already noticed the same thing... Maybe it would be a good idear to generate some statistics in a couple of days and create a list of posts that were given exactly 1 merit AND this 1 merit was needed to stop the demotion of the receivers... That way we could filter trough these posts and neg tag anybody who clearly tried to cheat the system by trading/buying exactly 1 merit....
I remember theymos saying not to tag them for small abuses, and I for sure won't do it.This is a great news, maybe 5 merits for jr members are even better, I'm very happy with this change.
If Jr. Member requirements go up by 1 Merit point every 6 months, it will demote the farmers again 
You can feel the pain of loosing money /in terms of copper membership/ or loosing time and effort (or money again) for making this one post to get you the missing 1 point.
Now is perfect time to hunt for the plagiarism, many will come forward with copy/paste guides like this one I reported today > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030651.msg45821554#msg45821554