Pretty sure there are still a few thousands of them who are not getting paid either because they want to, or because no signature campaign wants to take them due to posting habits, merits, or previous flags.
There are people, who are just active on the forum and contributing the way that they can and not minding the payment, and their are still those, who get paid and still giving their best to the Community. Every person has different goals.
Absolutely, and it's always been that way as far as I can tell.
I'm currently not in a signature campaign (though I'm a member of Foxpup's merit cycling club, I don't have a post quota) and I spend a hell of a lot of time on the forum every day, whether it's reading through various threads trying to get some news, handing out merits, or just dropping some posts that interest me. I did not come here to earn money back in 2015, and I'm still not here to earn money. Sure, if there's a campaign that'll have me, why not get paid for doing what I'd be doing anyway? Right now there isn't, yet here I am, blabbing away as if I had a crazy character quota.
However, I still think that most newcomers to the forum have been enticed by the prospect of joining a campaign or bounty, which is why merits are still so important. But whatever; it's been that way for years.
Ahh Sir Sceptical, if only these anti-sigs thinks the same way as you do.
Signature campaigns have been the forum's bread and butter combo but as it stands the hate for signature campaign members seem to just grow by the day, and I'm not sure if I'm comfortable about it anymore. People stating in their posts that the quality of the forum's gonna shoot up if theymos stopped allowing signature campaigns from happening and the likes have bugged my meta feed for a while now and frankly I just don't understand the hate directed towards people who are given the chance to get paid for doing the same thing they would otherwise do if they aren't.
Matter of fact and this is a keen observation of mine, most shitposters in here aren't even from campaigns, they were those no-sig mfers who push out content shat by ChatGPT or stolen from the bird app to get merits and rise up the ranks, possibly to get signed up on a signature campaign, if they want to shoo shitposters away from this forum I think they should look into that instead of directing their hate against people whose posts are weekly audited and observed for quality.