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.
It is the important point.
As @coinlocket$ presented in his thread, the merit distribution increased more than 90% over the last week, since the implementation of new rank requirement, which requires 1 merit to be a Junior Member.
It's also noticeable that more and more Junior Members that have 1 merit after that day.
Before that day, I believe that it is hard to find a Junior Member with at least 1 merit.
Personally, I call it as one of side effects of the new rank requirement.
Anyway, thanks @Theymos by the latest adjustments on ranking system.
Now, we could just filter those merited newbies and check them which are legit and alt accounts. It would minimize the job of the mods to catch the account farmers and the spambies in the forum.