For the OP creator,

For now, one merit for Junior member rank has massively affected spammers. All of them turned to Newbies, and part of them exchanged merit (one point) to move back to Junior rank.
Of course, it's hard to discover how they abuse the merit system and also unfairly to judge their abusements base on only one merited thread.
Sometimes, forum users send their sMerits away for non-sense thread without merit exchange.

In another topic, I suggested potential solution in the future.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5039367.msg46269972#msg46269972