Why are negatives so important? Because they give weight to neutral points. Just like trust.
If a user has positive merit : This guy knows how to get himself sucked by other users.
If a user has negative merit : This user writes shitposts and spam.
The problem is that a negative merit can also mean: "This user writes about topics where people were disagreeing with him." Did you read the long discussions about Segwit last year? Tons of negative merits would have been distributed there.
And there is a almost unsolvabe problem with this approach:
How do you "earn" the right to give negative merits? If they were distributed by activity or even you could merit negatively as often as you wanted, you could simply farm accounts to distribute negative merits for people you don't like. The only possible way I can imagine to give negative merits some sense would be if people would have to earn "positive" merits to get the right to distribute "negative" ones.
No, negative merits don't solve anything but only create new problems. And there are already two ways to deal with spam posts (without needing admin privileges):
- Report them
- in the case of a recurring offender: Distribute negative trust.
In fact, if you removed the positive merit and only kept the negatives, it would be a much more accurate indication of spammers, because as it is right now, I'M ALSO considered a person that spams, just like everyone else with default merit.
Incorrect. You're not "considered a person that spams". If you had 0 self-earned merits (in your case, you have some self-earned points already) then you simply are considered a person that "didn't contribute a merit-worthy post". There is a wide area between "spam" and a "merit-worthy post".
There are definitely other solutions to work around this, as long as you think about improving the main issue :
Merit is forcing people to post just like sig campaigns are.
Please name some solutions you have in mind. It's really hard to figure out a system that does justice to all.
The "issue" you point out, in my opinion, is not a problem because
you don't need Merits if you don't need to post for signature campaigns. You can use the forum normally (even the Marketplace) without a single merit point. And the proposal I first linked to (probation period for newbies) would solve the problem you point out entirely - because in this case, you got the signature at the start, and you only get removed it if you write spam posts.