Nevertheless, why are good posters trusted by default? In my humble opinion, the logic of having 250 merits or even 1 merit to be voted into DT is seriously flawed.
This could very well be true, but the question remains... What's a better way of doing it? theymos is trying his best. If you propose a better way, it would likely be considered.
The better way is 100-150 earned merits plus 1500 + activity. Hence getting the best of both worlds and also you give a guarantee of a longer history here to review before making a decision.
Also you do not allow it to be GAMED as easily by those that are able to reward their own political groups with merit and ensure they control the entire DT system because even self awarding merits to their own group will not allow them to push possible ALTS and new friends into DT. They will be able to bestow merits on them but they will still have to wait for the objective and fair metric of activity to be met so that will slow them down greatly and filling it full of newly joined buddies.
Putting in activity and lowering merits to earned 100 or even 150 would be far more sensible.
Guarantees more history to review, longer time without scamming, not as easy to collude and control. More to lose since gaining that activity again which can not be gamed even if you have a bunch of pals as merit sources is going to be impossible to speed up.
Really though both systems of control should be entirely separated but on a anonymous forum that is probably impossible to ensure.