Good for you guys for being really tolerant for stuff like this. On a bad day, I could probably see myself publicizing their PMs lol. Thankfully I haven't received any spam emails for a while though, so there's that.
but it seems to be the mid ranking members that do this.
Now this is the quite surprising part.
Surprising, yes and no. My beggar was a Newbie, who probably didn't know the rules very well, because it's really not that difficult to get 10 "Member rank" Merits. Most Merit-giving members put the bar relatively low for Newbies, provided they do not shitpost and show minimal "genuine" interest in the boards.
It's getting more difficult once you're on the way from Member and up, I guess, for the simple reason that you need a lot more to rank up.
Like hilariousetc was saying:
It's very hard for an average poster to rise through the ranks, hell, even a decent poster probably won't achieve the sufficient merit to become a Hero within the timeframe it takes to get the required activity (...)
What most should understand is that life's too short to care too much about Merit. I've often wondered how much money and energy people lose when they spend their time desperately posting spam and begging for Merit and coins, instead of putting that time and energy in a real-life job with a real-life income (fiat of course, but at least it's better than nothing and a lot of frustrations and in the end seeing your modest profile getting banned for spamming or begging).
People should come to these boards to learn, participate (that's not a synonym of shitpost) and have a good time.