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.
That's not unique to you - Bitcoin Discussion is a mess, that's why. The last data I saw showed it has the lowest merit per post ratio of any of the non-altcoin boards. Most threads turn in to spamfests, and no one with any sense is reading past the 3rd page or so. Any replies on threads like that aren't even going to get seen, let alone merited.
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.
Totally disagree with you here. There are
plenty of legendary members which just spam one or two line nonsense. I went to Altcoin Discussion, clicked on the first megathread I saw (this one
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5165503.0), and Ctrl+F for "legendary". Here are some of the profiles I came across in the space of a few pages:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=407887https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=162975https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=22145https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=358450https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=148225https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=101432They are all spammers. It took me a total of under a minute to find these 6 profiles. There are plenty more.
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.
I think you misunderstand. Merit and sMerit are totally separate. Your merit score will never decrease because of sending sMerit to other people.
The idea that you can lose your ranking as a legendary member for posting because you joined the forum earlier on seems rather outrageous.
Almost everyone (theymos included) has agreed that while airdropped merit could/should decay, ranks should not.