Honestly it doesn't matter if the rank rule is applied or not. Merit can be bought. So, managers apply the jr member rule and then there will be 500 new jr members the next week. Even if they don't buy the merit, users can start meriting their alts. They may even make a post that gets them 1 merit.
While introduction of rank requirement wouldn't stop altcoin farms entirely, I still think that it would make their life much harder. And I don't think that it would be so easy to buy merit at such a larger scale without any of the forum detectives figuring out what's going on.
They may even make a post that gets them 1 merit.
I've stumbled upon cases like that, bounty hunter writing a normal post just to get merit and then going back to his usual routine of spamming those reports in bounty section and it really sticks out like a sore thumb.
A solution has to go further then rank.
What's your take on solution for altcoin farms abusing bounty campaigns?