At the beginning when the merit system was new it stopped the account farmers for a while. I'd say the forum gained a couple of spam-free years because of it but since they figured out how to game it, yes that time is over.
This is a point that I still haven't been able to understand, how is the system manipulated?
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Well, it is not rocket science.
If you go to WO or the $100k/push-up challenge topic start posting moon boi messages, you'll farm some serious merits that way. Once you have a main acc that holds considerable amount of merits, you can start building your own alt army and exchange merits between accounts. That's probably what the acc farmers are doing atm. It might sound unreal, non-sense, unworthy to you but some people try it anyway.
You are right some people give merits to short ass moon boi messages a lot and that behavior encourages account farmers but here is the problem, merit distribution is not moderated. Meaning, people can merit whatever post the find merit worthy.
In the end we are almost back to where we were before a decade ago.
I understand what you're saying, and I realize that it might even work to a certain extent, but I have some reservations about whether it's really a big problem or just one or another more publicized case.
Or maybe I'm just being very naive and don't understand the scope of this whole "macabre" scheme.
A user has three alt accounts in addition to their main one. They collect merits from their main account, which they then redistribute among their alts. (At this point, if someone is caught doing this, they can be reported, I think it wasn't the first time it happened.) But, he doesn't get caught and continues.
If the main account earns 30 merits, it distributes 10 merits to the 3 alts.
Each alt will have 5 merits to give. If everyone gives to the main, he will have 7 merits to give.
It returns 2 merits for each alt account.
These alts return to giving 1 merit to the main, and have 1 or 2 more merits to give.
In the end, each high received about 12 or 13 merits throughout this process.
He has to do this scheme about 10 times for an alt to reach Full Member. Added to that, each alt has to have an activity of about 200.
Honestly, I find it hard to believe that with just this scheme (have 1 or more alts) the account will level up.
I still remember the effort involved in leveling up and earning merits, and I find it hard to believe it's that simple. Yes, I probably also earned some merits with little effort, for posting in a few threads. But I also know it was never a significant amount, maybe 10, 20, a little more. That doesn't get you very far.
I see it as somewhat difficult for someone to farm merits using only these resources. Maybe they're being naive... but I think it's difficult.