I joined the forum it was a few days before the merit system was implemented. I didn't care much about my account, activity merit or whatever. I didn't even knew what was a merit when I received my first one.

Few weeks later I discovered how this forum is a really cool place.

Then I thought merit system wasn't a nice implementation, as it was possible to keep merit circulating only in closed circles. But I decided to keep using the forum anyway, and then I realized that I was wrong: Merit is not circulating in closed circles, and anyone can really rank up and earn lots of merits.

After that, I saw some nice improvements in the forum, as you already mentioned. As this forum is very big and it is working fine, every move must be cautious and slow.

Spammers/scammers certainly won´t like those new improvements. And that´s good.