If that is really true, and your primary concern, then ban all sig and take away all financial motivation for posting much as it is possible.

Do not fear shrinkage of users, those that leave were not real enthusiasts and would have no issue diluting useful collisions here to gain some btc dust. Get rid of the bulk of financially driven posters and the forums usefulness will jump ahead.

If you are a true enthusiast and want to help build an end to end trustless decentralised arena you will put effort into helping build it regardless of whether your post will earn you money.

I just got chipmixer burn in on my oled screen reading this thread. Do you really expect to get an objective view here? be sensible.

May as well go ask which alt is best on the alt board and expect objective helpful advice.

Whilst there is financial incentive to post and whilst you have people controlling peoples ability to get paid to post (and their rates) whilst themselves being part of "high rate paid to post" campaigns ..then you will always have motive, and means for abuse. That will end up being a big problem.

You will have a system that is encouraging gaming the systems from both ends the top and the bottom. To prevent this gaming you have a huge problem on an anonymous forum like this. I say to me it looks impossible to set up some decentralised self governing control as it seems you are attempting. In addition to that you must accept these mechanisms are influencing free speech.

Your idea in the OP does have some merit. It would take out some of the possible gaming and manipulation regardless of what people are telling you (you need to look at the motivation for them telling you that). I mean if we could thrash out some real criteria for merit so it was not open to wide abuse and then we only showed sigs under those posts that were merit worthy that could actually work. It would be a good start to a real meritocracy and something all people should support.

If we could

1. drill down on criteria that defines a post of positive value
2. drill down on how to ensure only posts of positive value receive merit
3. drill down on how only those merited posts were rewarded financially

that would be excellent and a true meritocracy

those top 2 things alone seem quite impossible on an anonymous forum

Until you can create a fair meritocracy you will have a war, gaming and create more destructive issues on board than what you realise.

My advice remains as it was many weeks ago. Until there is a sure and tested way to allow the board to be used as a financial reward structure that strongly represents contributions given that is reasonably fair and impossible to game then ban all sigs.

I would strongly recommend that you read this thread again

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5088852.0

Although it may be rather long, boring, and in quite horrific english that does not at all render the truths you will find there invalid.

I see you as a person that wants satoshis principles took forward and applied when and where possible. I see that you are trying to decentralise control here and find ways to make things better for the entire board. I do not think it will be possible whilst financial motive is there and any room to abuse your systems still exists.

To create a real meritocracy you will need to drill down and down to define the smallest units upon which you will then build. There can be no room for abuse else you will always have successful selfish actors and wars.

For now ban all sigs and take time to develop a system that can cope with them in the background. Then later perhaps release into the wild. Until you can ensure all systems guarantee to treat all persons actions and behaviours the same and equally then you will always have a big issue here.