Read
theymos' post on how harmful it is to limit newbie participation.
But we're only talking about ONE thread, not the entire forum, and its not a "newbie jail" in the slightest. Its one fricken thread that is being manipulated by shitposters for the sake of earning merits so they can further their shitposting habits. How about instead of restricting low level accounts from posting there we disable the meriting of these accounts, or remove merits from the thread altogether.
I think that disabling merits in WO is unfair to those who have a large number in merits in WO and are not merit farming. Around 30-38% of my posts are in WO and while I admit to shitposting every now and then, I feel that I have earned most of my merits in WO rightfully, with somewhat decent informative or conversation-productive posts.
I agree with you, but you're already a Legendary... You don't need any more merits. I realize some campaigns have the 'how many merits earned in the last xx days part' but any manager who reads your posts knows you're a step above the average applicant.
veteran accounts and merit sources need to hand out merit more responsibly. The only reason we see such WO merit farming is because merit farmers get rewarded for their crap posts. And there is too much merit going around, it feels like we are in a merit inflation.
This is also very true.