I've updated the OP:
In 24 hours, that's 23.3% less posts.
In 48 hours, that's 18.6% less posts.
In 1 week, that's 15.9% less posts.
Unfortunately, it looks like the spam reduction is already diminishing. That can be caused by the fact that last week the number of users with 1 Merit went up
25x faster than it did in previous weeks. Many Newbies were promoted back to Jr. Member, and
many of those were ranked up through Merit abuse. I also see more Newbies wearing Copper Membership now, which allows them to continue spamming their signature.
I'm ok with 15%
Don't forget that when comparing the 24h interval you're comparing Sunday with Monday, and you can see a drop one week before also
0 | 26510 |
1 | 42433 |
2 | 46736 |
3 | 54921 |
4 | 45271 |
5 | 48072 |
6 | 48926 |
7 | 46559 |
8 | 45886 |
9 | 49366 |
10 | 55894|
Posting tweeter and fb links was not affected by this and I assume a lot of them started posting more since the signature option was no longer available. Judging by the fact that the Bounties board has become the second largest it might be safe to approximate 25% of the traffic goes there so the drop comes from the other sections.
And unfortunately, there are a lot of spammers with 0 merits that have ranked a long time ago and those are not affected.