Okay I just want to point out involving merits into a a signature campaign won't work out. All that will do is encourage merit abuse and then everyone will say, "Oh look at that SteveStake now and his merit abuse! This merit abuse is clearly because the wages are too low!"
Of course it won't work if you rely entirely on the merit requirement, like you seem to rely on ranks here:
I assumed anyone who was capable of achieving a rank such as Senior member or higher without being banned was credible enough to be given a chance.
Merit is not a solution, it's one of the tools you can use to filter the pool of candidates to a manageable set. You still need to... you know...
manage the campaign, including your obligation to the forum to not encourage low effort spammy posts. If that involves paying more and/or limiting max number of posts and/or kicking out low quality posters - that's what you gotta do.
Your lazy arrogance is almost like a work of art, well done.