I don’t agree with that. There is enough quality in this forum, this is not an Encyclopedia, it is a forum. The problem is that quality gets hidden under lots of shit. But there’s lots of shit in other forums as well, the higher the traffic, the more shit.

You are partially right in that there are lots of shitposters complaining about merit and don’t actually make an effort to get them, as they only care about throwing quick lines and get paid.

But there is another problem, for many good users it’s taking a long time to rank up, much more than with the old system. That’s why more merit sources are needed, that’s why theymos introduced 36 more recently.

I’ve said it ad nauseam, even the first times I was commenting on meta, back a year ago. Do you want a quality forum? It is going to be dead. Look at the Ivory Tower and you will see what will happen if this forum only cares about quality. We have to seek an equilibrium between quality and traffic, and that means that good and ok users have to be able to rank up in a reasonable amount of time even if they don’t make exceptional posts.