Before all of y'all start complaining and making a billion new topics about being demoted, read
this announcement from theymos. Essentially:
Due to excessive garbage-posting, you now need 1 merit to be a Jr Member. All existing Jr Members who didn't meet the requirement were demoted. Also, newbies can no longer set any signature or personal text.
It's not super difficult to get one merit. Make decent posts that add something to the conversation rather than just rephrasing something someone else has already said. Also, if you're concerned about any bounties you were in that had a rank requirement, talk to your bounty manager about seeing if they will still give you credit for your work.
Finally, don't beg for or buy merits. I can understand that this is frustrating for a lot of you guys, but there's no reason to risk your account for just one merit.
And for those of us that have merits to send, please keep this in mind:
I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.
You may not agree with everything someone says, but try to look into the effort behind the posts. It will encourage those who are at least trying to make decent posts to continue posting in the future. Spend some time in the patrol section and look for posts to give merit to
Or it will stifle the growth of this forum and turn many people away who could have contributed positively to the growth of crypto in general. Merit is finite, the time people have is finite, so that doubles up to a lot of people not advancing in rank that likely earned it. I don't have an answer for spam I simply ignore it. You already had it gated at Jr Member which just had a minimum post amount along with an amount of time needed on the forums I believe.
Really this only matters because you have removed our ability to set signatures or personal texts which is a dick move in my opinion. Who exactly are you protecting with this move? You say people are getting scammed right? Who the hell is looking at a spam post looking at their signature and going that guy spamming LEET CRYPTO BLOCKCHAIN MOON MONEY MOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He looks like the guy I want to take advice from. Realistically it allows people to look at what that poster is advertising and maybe avoid it because of that.
What it does take away is people who would have been Jr. Member making reasonable to quality posts (but not exceptional enough to get merit or simply was never seen) from advertising whatever project they have found. Giving them less reason to even use this forum. Overall this change is just going to drive people away from this forum imo.