Wonder what will be the long term effect. I struggle to believe that signature campaign abusers with thousands of accounts, will be stopped by the new ranking requirements. Possibly a minor inconvenience for them, as they are likely to find a way, whether it's buying/trading merit or hacking accounts. We can expect countless jr.members accounts with 200+ activity and single merit hoarding signature campaigns again in less than 5 months.
Agreed, but it's a good first step. 1 merit is easily tradable, and I think the ultimate goal would be to remove signatures from everyone below member rank, thereby requiring 10 merits instead of 1 before being able to participate in bounty campaigns.