This is the same overused argument. Just because there are no forum rules dictating whether you can/can't do something does not mean that people are disallowed from sending trust feedback for it.

What do ad hominem attacks have to do with anything? Regardless of the truthfulness of the arguments, they aren't really sound if you're trying to justify something.

Wrong. Nice try though. It just means you were an idiot.

Negative trust can be fake.

Nice work. Tagged both.

You only understand shitposter logic, so unless it's an argument that validates your excuses and laziness, you wouldn't understand it.  Certainly nothing Lauda says is going to make sense to you.  How you ended up with even a single merit point thus far is beyond me.   Tell me true, you purchased that merit, didn't you?

For your information, this forum is owned by a person because he made the idea and made it real with some hosting job, coding job, etc. That person also pays for the fees of moderators and other things to make this forums goes well. You, me, and others are all only people who gathers here to talk about cryptocurrency, and some to try to get money from it. You don't even pay a single bit USD to the owner yet you claim this is an open forum and before something implemented in this forum they need to consider what the users want. Hello, wake up please !
As for your question no 2, why all people not given the same merit, zero. I believe it is also for the sake of new member too. Imagine if all people starts with 0, I bet all high rank member who is friend to each other will give merit to each other because with their experience, most likely only them will make a good and high quality posts and then all the lower rank will be ignored, resulting to much more time to rank up.

On the contrary, the merit system is a way to introduce consensus about post quality, and the future direction of the forum.

Another one-line shitposter complaining about the new system. How about doing something original for a change?