Personally I like the
idea floated by PowerGlove about the option to turn merits off in a topic by its creator. Seems like a straight-forward implementation and would assist those who want discussion in their thread to be more serious.
While that implentation looks convenient, I don't think that it would bring desired effect and those threads would probably end up like Serious Discussion/Ivory thread - basically ignored.
I agree that PowerGlove suggestion does seem like it would be something that could be implemented for thread starters to be empowered in a kind of way that they are empowered with their decisions whether to have a open thread or a self-moderated thread, yet at the same time, the PG suggestion does seem to go a bit far to give that much power to individual thread starters to potentially undermine the likely advantages of having merit sending and receiving abilities across all threads.. and yeah the Ivory tower does seem to be an exception.. and I am doubtful that I have participated very much in those threads.. even though I don't always look which section I am in if someone (or a post) ends up referring me to a topic.
By the way, I just made several changes to my earlier post in this thread (from about 12 hours ago, and I probably did get a bit carried away with some of the at-first attempts at mere clarification... so if anyone might be interested in looking at that post again
here's a quick link)