The economy made itself, anything below Junior member is most of the time completely irrelevant in sig campaigns.
But this just wasn't the case. Many ICOs accepted anyone, even Newbies, and people were literally farming Junior accounts by their dozens and in some cases hundreds (and probably even thousands) just to abuse campaigns because that's all they needed to do to maximise earnings. That really needed to change and one merit is only a small spanner in the works for the biggest abusers and doesn't go far enough in my opinion.
Other more elitist campaigns only accept hero and legendary members and make the barrier to entry even higher, I don't mind all that.
I wouldn't call them elitist. I only wish more campaigns only accepted certain higher ranks, or just people who actually made great posts. If campaigns did their due diligence and had some quality control then we wouldn't have even needed ranks or merit in the first place, but the problem is many campaigns accepted anyone regardless of quality and that was the whole crux of the problem.
That last statement is a bit subjective. You should see both sides of the coin. A few people already agree with you and prove it with only allowing a select few to their signatures. But the others that don't, they're not really stupid (I hope..). If they see that allowing more people is more beneficial to their campaign, who are we (you the elitist, me the more lenient) to judge? It's their money they're losing/making.
If someone is ((((stupid)))) enough to allow lesser ranked people into his campaign, regardless of whatever system you could posssibly come up with, they're going to keep their low standards.
Requoting you : "people were literally farming Junior accounts by their dozens and in some cases hundreds (and probably even thousands) just to abuse campaigns"
That honestly is another problem which is alt accounts. If genuine unique people came in droves to register on the bitcointalk, is that really a bad thing? If they were indeed alts, I'm 100% pro-alt banning. Alt accounts add nothing of value.
And finally, Merit. The centralized limited supply currency. I objectively can't see anyone agreeing to this system, unless they're renowned members who can use connections and biased feelings from other fellow sMerit owners to exchange points.
The only people who wouldn't agree to it are those who now actually have to start writing half-decent posts, and that isn't a bad thing. Any 'renowned' member wouldn't have an issue getting merit because they already make great contributions so it's largely irrelevant to them, but something needed to be done about the droves of people coming here just to post utter drivel over their 200 alt accounts each, especially when they can't speak English very well or know little to nothing about bitcoin and are only here because someone told them they can get paid for spamming or copy and pasting. Merit isn't a perfect system and it does work, but if you have a better solution I'm sure everyone would love to hear it.
Like I said, I agree with you that alt accounts are bad. But is Merit really solving the problem here? This is pure speculation but I'm willing to bet that people who are interested in alt accounts are more likely to be longtime members that true newbies.
The merit system doesn't benefit people who write half-decent posts, more than it benefits people who have some sort of "fanbase", "fellowship", sometimes power, leverage. No one besides the select few sMerit generators is going to waste his points on the daily. He needs them to maybe build trust, convince someone, kiss ass, whatever the reasons may be, the reason of "oh wow i'll merit this well written post because the user is honest" comes last.
A solution? What's the problem in the first place? Alt accounts? I don't know the behind-the-scenes of this forum, but maybe just ban out alting as a whole? If we can all agree on paper that they bring nothing of value, why don't you act on it?
If the problem isn't alt accounts, what then? Forcing people to make well-written posts? There are other systems based on negatives rather than positives. Punish the users who DO spam, don't punish the users who don't post ENOUGH. Force a word-count rule on lower ranked users.
Or maybe the merit system but in reverse, instead of people being able to +1 people, how about them being able to -1. No one might care about meriting a well-written post, but that doesn't matter because it also prohibits people from using merit as a bargain chip. On the other hand, if a user posts some extremely low quality post, make other users punish him.
In my personal opinion, in the end, context matters a lot. You can't judge a post quality based on word count, user rank, or merits. Almost all signature campaign posts have a shitton of merit, does that mean they contribute with any intrinsic value besides money money for everyone? So in the end, without context, it's just another stat that people are going to trade.