A ranking system should reflect competence, integrity and credibility of those it is bestowed upon. Unfortunately, the BTT system should be stremlined and made balanced through the implementation of necessary trade-offs. A system that promotes but never demotes never gets the best of its men. Let’s make this happen.
I actually liked this idea but I don't think we need it here, for example on ALTT doesn't have a feedback or trust system like we (BTT) have, so what they do is deduct all of the karmas of spammers, just like there is a new case where 5 accounts were linked to single user and most of them were good profiles (means some are ranked) so what admin did is just reduced there karma (merits) to zero but no Trust or feedback (AFAIK). But here if you think someone is doing nothing, just trolling, no contributing, nothing no but sits with high merits then you don't have to demerit them for that because the merits they must have earned are on the posts that one might have found contributing.
But what you can do is give them neutral if that's according to the rules of the trust system. And what ratio do you propose, like 2 merits make 1 smerits so to give demerits (Dmerits) how many merits you should have, or you just be given the ability to demerit anyone, that will create more work for the moderators which I think they don't want, (just think). As merits, spamming is a thing and after this, they have to deal with the demerits of spamming too.