However if he tried to actually "game" the system to his advantage (not saying he did) should THAT be tagged?
With gaming the system I mean influencing DT list for his own sake or agenda and not for legitimate reasons. See Thule et al.
If the "gaming" takes the form of strategically sending a lot of merit, creating sockuppets, and stuff like that, then no. That sort of gaming might get me to blacklist people, in fact. But if it looks more like
politics, then that's OK, and that's what H8bussesNbicycles's thread looks like to me.
Is stingers still a merit source? Sending merits to pad H8's gang to 10 merits so that they would have votes. Not sure if that counts as "strategic".
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5103988.msg49590110#msg49590110Theymos gave already the answer its legit if it comes from free will of real users.
Stinger has posted that he have been abused in the past in his opinion and wishes changes.To achieve changes some people need to get voted up.If sending Merit to people you wish to move up would be forbidden how do you ever wanna implement a communities DT list when majority of merit is being hold by a very small group.
Merit sources have some different integrity rules than regular members, especially in the arena of
quid pro quo, which could also be a problem is they are using their source merits for personal agendas (which in that regard could be considered a kind of selling, even if not direct).
Factually speaking: I know very little about Stinger, except what was described in these recent posts, so I, personally, would not have enough information to conclude that any kind of merit source abuse would have been taking place, specifically in regards to that situation.