I believe most will agree with me that there is a high probability factor that people give merit to those who merited them in the past
I've Merited many people who Merited me. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the posts deserve it. It still worries me though, when I notice someone Merited me right before I Merited them. It's a risk when you sent out lots of sMerit, but I still try to avoid it (meaning I won't Merit a deserving post if that user just Merited me).
I think this is misused by those farming accounts.
It happens indeed, but people are also free to spent their sMerit the way they want. If it's abusive, they risk getting tagged. If they're Merit sources, they risk losing their source.
Account farming is a hard thing to tackle imo and was the original reason for the merit system.
At least it's a whole lot more difficult now. There used to be account farmers with tens or hundreds of high-ranking accounts, and that's completely impossible to do now.
You can check and create list of backscratchers and backstabbers of merit (LoyceV has it for custom trust list).
Actually, I made this for Merit:
Merit Backscratchers: who scratched who's back the most?[parody] Merit Backstabbers: who stabbed who in the back the most?It's been a year, so I'll update these topics.
I don't see a problem with LoyceV and fillippone sending a lot of merits to each other (if they have, I haven't checked), for example. Putting a cap would distort the system.
I've received
195 sMerit from fillippone, and returned
123 or less (I'm not in his top 10).
If there's no cap on good posts, there shouldn't be a cap on Merit to send.