This is how merit laundering happens: I post a normal or high quality post, then someone gives me 50 merits, so I'm left with 25 smerits, then I send 25 smerits to another compatriot, then he will receive 30 merits from merit source, then he sends me 10 merits and so on. I would say that most of the times, local board members send inadequate volume of merits to their compatriots. Btw it's hard to argue whether person deserves 1 merit, 2 merit or 50 merits because everyone can back it up simply: I felt so.
I do understand where you're coming from but few things to consider:
- Merit history is publicly available, so when you have few people sending all merits between each other that could actually work against them i.e. they could get rejected from signature campaigns if a manager cares to take a closer look.
- This is not unique to local boards and abuse (or in-group preference) could happen outside of local boards.
- Finally, the idea is (or should be) to have every board "covered" by someone who is a merit source, this doesn't mean that local board participants who are sources have to distribute all their sMerits there, they could do it on other boards. Distributable merits are not earmarked.
So it all boils down to whether the right people are chosen as sources and whether their monthly allowance is of the right size. And also to whether campaign managers are doing enough to fight spam/low-quality posts.
I gave you and the others 14 merits each. Hope some one gets appointed.
Massive thanks (and to others who merited). Much appreciated.