Yeah, that seems like some blatant ass-kissing to me. If a merit count of 4646 is anything special, then any arbitrary merit count is as well (unless I'm missing the significance of that particular number). In addition, there's no reason why DYING_SOUL had to "celebrate" someone else's merit "achievement". The fact that he chose yahoo62278 to do it for? Yep, more evidence of ass-kissing and most likely hope for merit-granting.
That thread should probably get locked if you ask me. I might have posted in it once or twice, but it seems to have attracted merit beggars and honestly it's just a big jerk-off thread that doesn't need to exist anymore.
Is there anything else that you think could/should be considered being added to those sorts of threads to restrict the growth of farmed account operators whilst still facilitating the process that the OPs of those threads intended for genuine accounts?
That question has been in play for years, my man. There's not much the community can do by itself except to ignore threads that are magnets for shitposters and merit beggars and--more importantly--to
not hand out merits to members who clearly don't deserve them. Only Theymos has the power to make rules that stick.
One small idea is for the OP of a thread like the one you referenced to make a local rule of some sort. If done properly, posts that violate the rule(s) could be reported to the moderators and would likely get deleted. We lowly forum members do have the right to create local rules when starting up threads; it's just a matter of caring enough to do so and wording them effectively.