So if someone posts something really useless or copy/pasta reply, he can get downvoted enough not to lose merit but to think about what's he posting next time. Like a small slap on the wrist.
If someone posts something 'useless' report the posts and admins would delete them.
If someone copy and pastes, report the posts and the user would be banned for plagiarism.
4. That would essentially eliminate merit trading because they'd have to upvote every post of the person they want to send merit to and when someone's constantly upvoting someone even if the posts are useless, it might raise some red flags.
If someone consistently merits posts that are not quality then it would also raise eyebrows
I don't see much difference between this and the current merit system except that inaccurate and spam posts would be
presumably marked as such similar to other discussion forums like bitcoinstackexchange. I say presumably as there's no guarantee that the members voting on the replies are knowledgeable on that particular topic. Also that the system would be very complicated to understand and implement. The merit system is fine the way it is.