. To avoid abuse we could implement this right away by allowing current merit sources to have more weighting and prevent account farmers from having an impact by reducing their weighting to almost nothing.
I am curious to know how you'd determine who an account farmer is. Earned merits, rank, trust?
It think it would be susceptible to abuse on a small scale.
Overall, I don't think k you have to fix something that isn't broken. Delays in merit source isn't so much an issue that warrants changing the whole system.
The more people who have you on their list the more weighting you have. Anyone in the top 5%/10% or whatever we deem suitable for the size of the forum would then become a merit source.
If you make it an automated process, then members don't need to apply, or show interest. Take into account that not everyone would be interested in being charged with smerits to distribute within a certain time frame.