Suggestion
Those with Smerit but finds it rather difficult to be decisive on the quality of a post and are concerned about not having the Smerit burnt, should have a way of either sending it to users designated as merit source. Not necessarily meriting them, but rather transferring the Smerits as Smerit over to them or there could be an Smerit bank to function as a reserve from which, merit source user can access or would be shared out to merit sources following certain criterias.
What do you think about this, in light of the recent attacks on the merit systems and possibly give your suggestions too. Let's discuss.
Variations of this have been suggested many times and the answer is usually along these lines: merit is not scarce, theymos can produce any amount at any time if need be and has done so in the past. He seems to target ~20k merits sent per month (or perhaps some more complex formula but it hovers around 20k) and if the number drops significantly below that I would expect him to change merit allocations - increase amounts for more active sources, reduce for less active ones, appoint new sources etc.