In recent years, it seems that a lot of people have been making low-value posts just to get paid. To address this, I've added a merit "cost" to posting: from this point forward, for every 15 characters you post, you will lose one Merit point. This should eliminate any incentive to make low-value posts.

Any halfway-decent poster should be able to earn much more merit than they lose due to the penalty. But I recognize that some good posts are occasionally overlooked. So to counterbalance the penalty, I also added a system whereby you will earn a bit of merit just by reading posts. If you want to write a lot, you'd better do some reading as well!

For both the penalty and the bonus, this applies only to your merit score, and does not affect sendable merit (sMerit).

Let me know what you think of these adjustments.