What are the "quite serious" forum problems that were resolved that you are referring to? You mean things like account farming or something else? Are they solved or just the incentives changed?
Think about it, the newbie signature campaign were causing a lot of spam because of the famed accounts and the 1 merit rule was a game changer for them. In addition, theymos was against such(any) restriction but at the end he surprised everyone and the impact was
quite big.