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Lets remove Juniors sigs completely and make the merit requirement ten to get one. That way we can be way more liberal with merits and at least a shitposter will have to redeem themselves by making multiple quality posts so their previous history shouldn't be something we have to worry about as they've probably redeemed themselves if they've managed to get the ten merit.
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Hmm... the phrase I underlined is an interesting point which I hadn't thought of despite that I already agreed with your 10 merits to enable sigs suggestion. I definitely would be freer with handing out merits if it took 10 to enable sigs and though I would still check posting history because that's just the way I am, I rather suspect I wouldn't be nearly so thorough about it - just skim the first page, rather than actually read each post on the first 2-3 pages. But this is mainly because of the new form of insidious bump-bot I've been hunting, which engages in "low value discussion" (that is, a two-way conversation that is devoid of real content, as opposed to low value posting, which is basically unidirectional).