@Suchmoon keeps track of the earned merits that are destroyed as a result of a ban/nuke (see [MERIT][NSFN] We're destroying more merits than we're sending. Like, way more). We cant derive the exact amount of sMerit that gets trapped in those accounts, but we do have others indicators such as the amount of merits and earned merits destroyed, as can be seen in the above referenced link.

Quote from: suchmoon on October 02, 2018, 07:22:15 PM

<>This is the data for ~5 months:

Code:

24564 permanent bans (including nukes):
   13104 Newbie 0.01 average merits
   6455 Brand new (nukes I'm assuming)
   1062 Jr. Member 2.1 average merits
   1883 Member 11.5 average merits
   1142 Full Member 103 average merits
   494 Sr. Member 257 average merits
   189 Hero Member 516 average merits
   191 Copper Member
   44 Legendary 1007 average merits

413404 merits destroyed:
   20616 earned merits**
   17 average merits per ban
   831 single-merit users banned

data as of 15/02/2019.

Im not really too concerned on the amount of sMerit that gets trapped in the event, since were it to be significant, @theymos can easily increment the Merit Source quotas to make up for it. Nevertheless, I doubt that it is significant enough to have to even need consider the option from a global perspective.

Transferring those sMerits to the reporters that originated the bans would seem to turn reporting into a sort of bounty hunting, where the bounty are the sMerits on the banned account. I dont really like the idea, and reporting should be a natural procedure on ones day to day browsing on the forum, and not a treasure quest.

It goes without saying that people who publicly report other users for rule breaking on threads (farms, plagiarism, etc.) do get merited, and some of those cases get uncovered after putting quite a bit of effort into it, and thus are likely to be appreciated by others with merit. But making a merit modus vivendi from a forum policy point of view is not likely to be endorsed.