I wonder same at times, it's much like real world economy where rich gets richer and poor stays poorer.
Best and accurate sentence so far. +1, which left me with a solo merit to keep the +merit box open!
I will not say that 100% of merit sources or other members are doing this but since the merit system was implemented there was so many trafficking starting from the guys sending +50 merit to their alts, friends between them for stupid comments...
Actually what I notice is the probability to be merited increase with how famous you are in the first place then how substantial your post is. For example if theymos makes a post about a new forum feature, he may receive for it a total of +50 merit, while if any other staff member announced it, he may receive less than 30. Same applies for other members. No?
This is exactly what am driving at, I have come across such accounts on bitcointalk here where it has not even up to 20 activities but has already gotten up full member rank at a Go... My opinion here is theymos should try to rebrand Bitcointalk with few changes.