Oh, I said that because a large %age of the highly ranked member that gets banned were for post made as further back as 3-4 years,
I don't think it's a large percentage. Do you have data to support that?
And even if true that doesn't mean they haven't copy-pasted for the 3-4 years since and it's nearly impossible to prove.
As LoyceV said, merit can be received through abuse and it can't be a solution
I wouldn't worry about that too much. How many of the 5000 users who get banned
every month would be able to claw their way back via merit abuse? Would they even do that on an account that already has one strike? Seems far more plausible to create or buy a new one. But this could work for genuine "mistaken" users.