Cutting merits off completely might be too harsh although some merit sources in that thread could do better. It takes just a few seconds to stop and think "does this post contribute anything positive to this forum (or thread)" before hitting that merit button. Some of them clearly don't do that and this goes against the intent of the merit system IMO. Unfortunately evaluating this and giving them some guidance and/or restricting their merit allocation is not something I imagine theymos has time for, and if anyone else tries to "investigate" then it would likely result in bias accusations etc.
But if someone were to attempt it, I think the percentage of merits earner inside WO vs outside of WO, particularly for low-rank bounty-and-signature users from non-English boards would be a good starting point. If it looks like this... might be a problem:
You're a living example of campaign managers not giving a shit about "quality" or "useful" or anything of the sort. The irony of you posting in the "AI spam" thread hasn't escaped me either.
But if someone were to attempt it, I think the percentage of merits earner inside WO vs outside of WO, particularly for low-rank bounty-and-signature users from non-English boards would be a good starting point. If it looks like this... might be a problem:
Disabling of merits on that thread will be an injustice to the senior and most well known members who have been active on that thread for a long time. Some of those members don't post on other threads at all, and if merits are disabled on that thread then their accounts may also not get new merits. That's actually not a problem because those members really don't need or care about merits that much because as far as I have noticed that none of them is in a signature campaign and they don't really care about signature campaigns at all.
The most members of the thread are true Bitcoin enthusiasts and they love to spend their time on that thread, and whenever they see a good post on that thread they can't stop themselves from sending merits to those posts. I think nothing is wrong in that kind of merit sending and the ones who are basically there for merit fishing won't get any better even if they receive 1000 merits which are required for legendary rank. I don't think that any manager would accept such merit fishers in their campaigns because most of the managers want high quality posters who could create useful posts for promotion of a campaign.
The most members of the thread are true Bitcoin enthusiasts and they love to spend their time on that thread, and whenever they see a good post on that thread they can't stop themselves from sending merits to those posts. I think nothing is wrong in that kind of merit sending and the ones who are basically there for merit fishing won't get any better even if they receive 1000 merits which are required for legendary rank. I don't think that any manager would accept such merit fishers in their campaigns because most of the managers want high quality posters who could create useful posts for promotion of a campaign.
You're a living example of campaign managers not giving a shit about "quality" or "useful" or anything of the sort. The irony of you posting in the "AI spam" thread hasn't escaped me either.