That's not the point though. I'm not spamming one liners but any posts I have made in Bitcoin discussion have received no merit. I've only gotten merit for posting in meta/politics and society which tend to be more hot button topics rather than constructive discussion about cryptos, for example. Merit is not a good measurement of contribution and there are plenty of members who post constructively as a norm that shouldn't be posted in this thread. There'd be way too many replies to post. Nearly every legendary member of the forum posts non-spam and should earn merit for every 10 posts they make by default because they're the last type of members to post spam.
Only airdropped merit would decay under theymos' proposal above, not earned merit.
I understand that, but merit is displayed as one overall number. Not split into merit and sMerit. So when merit decays, your overall number decreases and now you lose overall merit through sending merit, and decaying. This would certainly act as a disincentive to send merit if you are now losing merit two ways.
Seems people that are advocating for merit decay are members that post too much on drama ridden boards and receive merit for posting on hot button topics more than anything. The idea that you can lose your ranking as a legendary member for posting because you joined the forum earlier on seems rather outrageous. This would presumably apply to Hero's, Sr., Full, ect.
If the idea is to use merit to stop farming accounts in order to allow newbies - Jr. to stop spam, I think it's a great idea. However, decaying merit only effects more established members who don't spend their entire life on this forum racking in merit but also post constructively.