Are most people on this forum not sending their merits to other users? I went through many profiles and most people are sending their smerits.
Maybe bringing in the first suggested merit decay will be a nice idea. Let's say, for instance, if a member receives merit and tries to stack their Smerit for X period of time, it will decay in their profile if it's not spent. Maybe it will push and motivate members to be spending their Smerit regularly.
Why? It sounds not good to me. You earn the merit, why decay it? Not that it was given but earned. Those that prefer not to send the smerit will even still prefer it to decay but it has no benefit for the forum.
You are right @Charles-Tim
There are people who are naturally being stingy of their merit because they felt they worked hard to earn it therefore they wouldn't be generous to issue out their merits to unserious people and user because they believe it will contribute to them while they gained nothing. To me the system is fine like this and nothing should be changed, those who can't scale up the forum should quit and focused on other or possibly just keep reading. To me I see no much important is merit apartment from receiving it and joining campaign, of course I know it was implemented to avert spam or shit poster on the forum but nothing changes.