I understand the intention behind the last change in the ranking system, making 1 Merit point mandatory to achieve Junior Member status and wear signatures. However, in my opinion, this does discriminate new honest users more than it is necessary.

So here's an alternative idea:
- Return to the previous system (Jr. Member status is based only on activity, and Newbies get at least a minimal signature space)
- But both Newbies and Jr. Members are given their signature space only "on probation". That means that if one of their posts is legitimately reported as spam and thus removed, they lose their signature space entirely until they rank up to Member.

This gives Newbies and Junior Members incentives to write meaningful posts without having to renounce some of the features of the forum, and without pressure to get a merit which is sometimes difficult even if the post quality is otherwise good. And the standard to award merits also hasn't to be lowered.

(Unfortunately, the thread about the new changes has already grown too much that I could read it entirely, so it's possible that this was already proposed. However, maybe it's good to discuss it in a new thread.)

I don't see the big deal, honestly. 1 merit is so easy to come by that any decent poster will eventually get it, and they can carry on earning their monies. The only problem I see is when people have a hundred alternate newbie accounts instead of Jr members now, and they've stopped earning, and can't put bread on the table. At least it stops the spam though. Maybe, this will demotivate others from creating a hundred accounts just to earn on bounties.

I think your proposal will not lead to a logical goal. Because:
1) who will monitor compliance with this rule? Moderator? No, I think it's not right to load them. Other participants can certainly complain about such reports, but it will not lead to the result
2) Smerit- this motivation for newcomers, write better messages. Just today, in one day I saw 5 big articles from beginners who are trying nice whriting.
3) Administration forum published information, about new participants over the past months registration and spam. Signature of the J.member, spread a lot of spam. And create account farms.

But couldn't that be solved technically? I don't know the internals of the SMF software, but I think a "report" should be possible to be registered as an action by the software, and a "post removal" separately. So all what had to be done would be to only remove the signature if the post itself was both "reported" and "deleted", and so the other users posting in these threads would not be affected at all.