Although I'd love to agree with you, my university sees it otherwise, and if I ever want to get my MD, I do have to dance to their tune.
If you're going for a medical degree, props to you (and I mean that). But do they ever use the phrase "self-plagiarism"? It's not my intent to bicker about semantics, even though I started this by doing exactly that, but I'm just tired of people repeating things other people have said or written without thinking, just parroting. Maybe I'm in a pissy mood, maybe I'm being an intolerant jerk, but I see that behavior a lot online and it drives me nuts.
However, even if we call it a different thing, the definition would fit just right in this context: "Quoting you own work over and over again in order to get more citations" (or in this case, merits).
Yeah, I get what we're talking about here and I agree that Shamm shouldn't be reposting old posts of his as answers to other members' questions. I also think he understands that now, so hopefully this won't be an ongoing thing with him.
At the same time, there's this little pissy-mooded, intolerant jerk that's sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear that he is indeed trying very hard to earn merits and that it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he would employ alt accounts to ask questions that he could then post what look like high-quality, thoughtful answers to.
But again, there's no hard evidence of that.