The end result is firstly a lot of unnecessary spam and secondly the empowerment and multiplication of lazy shiposters, much akin to the creation of a beggar culture. Its developmentally crippling for these users and if the bleeding heart merit givers really cared for these people they would stop enabling them -- stop teaching them that spamming, sucking up and kissing ass pays.~
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If you saw people mindlessly copy/pasting Twitter posts in any other thread, would you merit them there as well?
Okay, I believe there is spam.
But, whoever gives merits is the one who has to evaluate what is or is not, it is legitimate to give merit. And at the same time avoid giving merit to "merit hunters". The person who has to meet this criterion is the merit giver.
So I say that if we say that sources of merits are credible throughout the forum, this board has no criteria. So it's the same as saying that they have no criteria in the entire forum.
Rules were never created for how to give merits. Each of us is free to use our own criteria for the distribution of our smerits. Creating this type of lock is an indirect way of creating rules.
Those who give merits have their attribution criteria, we may not agree, but we have to respect them. For each of us gives our smerits to whoever and wherever he wants.