I would argue that willingly or not, many of the most high-ranking members here subvert themselves to rules and preferences of the administration, other than actively taking part to forming new rules.
(...)
Features like merit fit the forum well but they were not made BY the community. Rather FOR it.
But it's a feature that was made in response to users requesting that something be done about spammers. Users outlined the problem and requested that a change be made. The administration acknowledged that and acted upon it. For the most part, users support the improvements merit has brought. There's just a small but vocal minority of antagonists (or perhaps even just one, lately) who would benefit from undoing such a positive change, and hopefully they will continue to be ignored, no matter how many sock-puppet accounts they create.