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The number of people who have sent merits to permanently banned accounts may be higher. Here is a list of the top 30. I can't say exactly how many, but if the full list is published, the number will probably increase and I estimate it to be more than 50.
Of course, the number of users sending merit to permanently banned users is much higher if all the data is public. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the data and I don't know the exact number. But someone like LoyceV or DdmrDdmr might be able to help if their tools record it periodically. But what's the purpose?
Identifying banned accounts is very difficult.
It's not as hard as you might think. Use a tool to identify them like the bpip extension or find out the full list from loyce.club.
https://loyce.club/bans/banned.htmlBut if you have a lot of merits, you can give merit to high-quality posters instead of looking at user profiles. Because, merit is not for a profile, but for good posts.
I tried to do my best, but here is the data so far based on bpip.org even though I'm not a merit source. I don't look at profiles, of course, but I have to limit the scale so that my contribution goal of helping users rank up for their quality posts is achieved.
Has sent 1007 merit 895 times, to 220 profiles