If the administration did not want this, then it would prohibit the execution of the signature on the forum. this would immediately solve all the issues. but this does not happen.
I actually think this should happen. I wouldn't mind the least bit if signatures disappeared tomorrow. Stopping Newbies from wearing sigs is the next best compromise.
Wouldn't be against it either, but the sad thing is all those who have caused the issue in the first place would instantly disappear like a fart in a breeze if signatures were ever removed and they will have ruined it for everybody else in the process. I think a much better solution would be to keep requiring more and more merit before you can earn via signatures here. One merit is a joke really. You can get that by accident and one merit doesn't qualify them to be able to earn via posting especially when a solitary merit can easily be obtained in numerous shady ways. Lets see how they deal with trying to get ten merit. That would make it ten times harder to abuse or get around. I think that would significantly improve the situation here and it's still not very hard to achieve for a half decent poster. The next step after that should be 100 merits. Then you would only be able to earn after you have contributed a lot and proven your worth here. If that didn't work then we could even go extreme and remove all signatures completely until you have a ridiculous amount of merit like 500-1000 or something and then only the best contributors could earn by posting and then we really would see a change in the quality of content here.
So old users should stop thanking the administration for cleaning up the forum.
Why? The new system is clearly working and frankly its provided a great deal of not only entertainment but insight into how much of a problem bounty hunters have created by infesting the forum. Its hard to find legitimate or interesting info any more because all the boards have been flooded with shitposters trying to meet criteria for their stupid bounties. Like I said, short of removing sigs altogether, this is the next best compromise.
It works in a tiny capacity at stopping certain people and abuses but doesn't stop others from abusing it in any way they can, and one merit really isn't enough. Read this thread from yesterday to see how one user was dishing out merits like candy to copy and pasters which most seemed to be alts or related in some capacity:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5037225.msg46135292#msg46135292Lets see how effective his merit sharing would be when each of his accounts need 10 or 100 or 1000 merits instead of just the one.