The activity period however promotes spamming at beginner level because of the need to rank up. I humbly suggest that the activity system should be reviewed, instead of counting the number of post per activity period it should be the amount of time invested in the forum.
The activity system is the least of this forum's worries as far as shitposting goes. Yes, it's probably true that many newbies make a bunch of garbage posts each day in order to reach Jr. Member, but they still have to earn 1 merit if I'm not mistaken, and that can be a pain in the ass for any of them who don't know how to form coherent sentences.
The activity aspect of bitcointalk has always seemed like an odd thing to me, as I've never seen anything like it on other forums. But be that as it may, I don't think it needs changing because I don't think it's the root cause of most of bitcointalk's problems. Same thing with the merit system.
OP, I'm glad you find this forum fascinating and believe me I understand why you're frustrated. When I registered here, there wasn't a merit system and there were so many one-line shitposts spread out across so many sections that trying to make a good post that members would read was almost a joke. There were so many account farmers that you'd have threads in which only a bunch of alt accounts owned by the same person would be posting. And so on--my point is that the bitcointalk you see right now is much different than it was prior to 2018 when the merit system was introduced. That cut down a lot of the BS I just mentioned, and IMO things are much better than they used to be. Perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But definitely improved.