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While I agree with most of what you say and thank you for the detailed response, I will quote where I think you are wrong:
If you want solutions, there are solutions. The forum could put a signature ban until people earn 10 merits and in those cases that you are saying, those who returned to the forum would be able to earn 10 merits in no time. They would have their merits and rank intact and their clickable signature right away.
So the shitposters buy 10 Merit with the account they bought, and continue.
The same way they buy it now? All the threads we see like "How can I get merit?" "How can I get high rank in BCT?" are because it's not that easy to buy merit and there are many who are stuck in newbie without moving up in rank. If we thought that way the merit system would never have worked because all shitposters could buy merit and would have no restrictions on getting paid to write crap. When the reality is that it has worked and buying merit is far from being widespread.
On this I agree with neuroticfish again:
And maybe I live in a dream world, by buying merits is not so wide spread (as buying accounts) and risky (or riskier) too. And if it's risky and expensive it may not worth the price (one can hope...)
To get down to the specific case:
I don't understand how this account can even be active in forum when he is doing ban evasion for years... so wearing a signature or not is much less problem in this case.
Thanks for that. Although I am raising the general issue here of why accounts of this style are entitled to clickable signatures, it is good to know. I will quote you in the ban evasion thread.