That's the point.
Merit abusers can not circulate their original merits forever.
They are limited and have to come to the end someday.
It is the key reason why @Theymos implemented the merit system and new rank requirement with main purpose to give spammers big motivations to change their posting habits.
I don't want to mention about Spambies from massive farms, but only main-account spambies. Some of them have changed, and might change in the future to be better publishers, in my positive belief.

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Totally agree with your proposal.

I don't think so, especially for Junior Member rank. We all can not say that someone is merit abuser by getting one merit for non-sense thread. During my time I spent in the forum, months after the beginning of new era with merit system and new rank requirements, I have seen several threads got meritted by higher-ranked members for almost non-sense threads. The key point is here, everyone have rights to give their sMerits away to any thread they want. For instance, some threads which make they laugh, even those ones are non-sense threads.
Consequently, it is really hard to say someone is a merit abuser by sending or receiving only on merit, in my point of view.

To sum up, your suggestion is only meaningful for more-than-one-merit-receivers or senders!

I don't think that the forum has actually changed this way.
The forum has warm welcome to all users, and all projects if they are real ones.
Scam projects have not welcome hear as you can see that @Theymos, the forum admin created a topic as a initiative to warn newcomers in crypto world about scam projects.
[ANN][ICO]HoweyCoins: the only BitcoinTalk-endorsed ICO - GUARANTEED PROFIT

Of course, bitcoin discussions are always the most priorities in the forum, because this one created at first years ago as a place for bitcoin discussions.

In my stance, the most impressive reality of the forum is the latest waves of wipen-out Spambies, who have toxidized the forum for a long period of time with their massively shitshows around many different boards, from Altcoins boards to Meta.
With the latest rank requirement implemented around 2 weeks ago, the forum has been much cleaner because all those guy are not able to wear signatures before they get at least one merit to rank up to Junior Member rank.

Not sure because it takes time to show real effects on spammers.
In my opinion, spammers who got promoted to Junior rank again will keep spamming.
At least, the new rank requirement has had massively effects on Spammers who are at Junior Member rank without any merit point.
They will get stucked at Newbies rank after demoted for a while.
They need to make something constructive to rank up or almost illegally exchange merit, lol.
I would like to call all spammers are Spambies, a really new term in the BTT forum, which I discovered in another topic.
Someone invented the term, 'Spambies'.
I love it, honestly.
Yeap, the forum has actually changed to a cleaner one. At least, my eyes has not been hurted with shitshow from Spambies.

We all need such massively positive effect.

This is one of main reasons why I have a idea that someday, @Theymos should implement new rank requirement which focus on the automatically raised required merits for each rank chronologically.
What I meant is, over a schedule timeframe, for instance 6 months, users at each rank have to satisfy their required merits (new required ones) in order to keep staying at their current ranks. If not, they will be automatically demoted.
To be more clarified, if someone is a Full Member for now, and fortunately stood at the rank with 100 automatically airdroped merits because they was Full Member before the beginning day of the system. Then, what will happen if those guys have perfect opportunities to stay at Full Member rank forever?
It is truly un-fair, right? If someone can not earn even 1 or 10 merit over six months, it makes a lot of sense. And, those ones should be demoted somehow, in my stance.
As you wondered, Spambies are not only Newbies, old Junior Members, but also included some higher-ranked users.

Nice initiative to give your sMerits away and to motivate forum users to keep contributing through their high-qualited, constructive threads.
If you have time, please take a look at my case some day @phillipma1957

I have gone more than three-fifths of my journey to Full Member rank. I have felt happy because nearly 9 months after merit system launch day, I have gotten 61 more merit points in total.

Highly appreciated your to to compose the thread, but honestly it is somewhat English-broken. I don't know how you made it, Google translate or made it yourself. For any case between these twos, you should improve your thread, in grammatical aspect, in order to make them easier to understand.

Furthermore, your above thread did not show anything new because such boring recommendation repeatedly quoted, posted in the forum since January.

Congrats for being a Senior after long journey with merit sytem and new rank requirements, @vlad230.
Personally, I have gone three-fifths of my journey to Full Member.
I wish that someday I can reach it.
You and @iasenko, @coinlocket$, @hugeblack, @Dmrddmr (of course, many others) are strong case-studies that users can still be able to rank up, even to higher levels in the forum with Merit system.
They can live with and rank up with the system without issues, except a little bit delayed.

One of the most interesting fact of the BTT forum is there are thousands of Spambies turned back to Newbies as effects of new rank requirements.
Newbies and Spambies by now highly correlated each other.
I am not the one, who invented the term - Spambies - but I love this term, which immediately provide quick assessment on quality of forum users.
Newbies who have hundred threads published in total will be truly Spambies. It makes lot of sense because only trash threads can not get merits, especially no merit point with hundred or thousand threads
Spambies will be stucked at Newbies if they will keep spamming the forum and can not get at least one merited thread.

Spambies, it is a new term in BTT forum, honestly.
You made great initiative to have a new namecalling term for Spammers.

With the newest rank requirements, those spambies have to unexpectedly, unavoidably got stucked at Newbies position.
It's one of the most magical impacts of the merit system, around 8 months after its start day.
This one have massively affected the way spambies spam the forum. I guess large part of them have gone away or at least thought of leaving away sooner or later, like they should do.

With the newest requirements on ranking system which mainly targeted at Spambies who used to be Junior Members, the forum looks much cleaner, better because Spambies can not be able to wear signatures and hurt my eyes with all their shitshows and signatures they worn.

Congrats to be added and tradeable on the Indian Bitbns exchange, which has been one of the most impressive emerging markets globally in the crypto ecosystem.
Moreover, DASH with its fast transaction speeds (InstantSend) and very cheap transaction fees can make a big difference for the massive targeted customer population in India.
As usual, the DASH team have made great initiatives to expand popularity, and customer population.

You maybe wrong at somewhat extent.
After the merit sytem and new rank requirement started months ago, forum users - especially lower-ranked ones - stimulated by new rank requirements which highly correlated with merit sytem.
Together, these twos force users to improve their theads' quality by concentrating more on their ideas, writing skills, in-context discussion, etc. to be rewarded with merits for their good contribution.

This topic might help you, fella.
[LEARN] BBCode Lessons & Tutorials [+tutorial videos!]
You should to learn BBCodes steps by steps through all those given lessons in the topic I shown you.

For the OP,

I suggest the OP creator to add the following helpful topic to the current OP.
[Tips] Guide for forum search

It's good to see old supporters of Solaris project has re-joined the topic and still worn old signature codes.

Solaris project has been moved considerably with continuously intensive works from the team last three months.
Those massive efforts have built up the txbit.io exchange and Android wallet. Lots of positive things to come over the rest three months this year.
Furthermore, you are right at this point when most of projects started showing early signals of their works because growth period - bullish market - to come soon. It's time for the news and showing good works.
Moreover, I wonder myself that whether it is right time to re-launch signature campaign?

Beside learning English, improving knowledge, skills on blockchain technologies in general are very helpful.
There is link to my topic on available courses on blockchain technology, most of them are free courses.
Available courses on Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology from colleges and Univers
English is one of essential stuffs to learn for newbies, especially non-native English speakers, but they would prepare enough knowledge, skills in crypto ecosystem.

More detailed guides on how to use the BTT forum's search function.
[Tips] Guide for forum search

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For the OP author,

No need to start a new thread to discuss about this issue. There are abundant dozens or hundreds of available topics, in which you can discuss your ideas.

What are you talking about? Only constructive threads/ topics will earn merits (as the original purposes of @Theymos when launching the merit system and new rank requirements). Simply talking about real deserved-merited threads, not fake ones which receiving merits from exchange, abusements, etc.

During early period after the first day of merit system, the Meta board has been covered with totally shitshow from spammers, shitposters, merit-complainers, etc. However, most of things fixed, lots of non-sense topics deleted, moved to trash can, and as you all can see that by now, there are very limited topics on merit system in Meta board.
Moreover, it is totally wrong to call the BTT forum as a shitposting-based forum, LOL.

At this point, you are right, my man!
Learning forum rules, structures, guides, etc. are very neccessary to start spending users' time in the forum.

@Theymos stated that someday in the future, he can make a final decision to prohibit all advertise, bounty campaign in the forum. Fortunately, it is the final solution. Recently, new rank requirement which required at least 1 merit to rank up to Junior Member rank implemented to more efficiently control spammers, or at least stop hurting eyeballs of forum users by reading shitshow from shit-posters.

The topic which published recently by @Theymos, the forum admin, is a helpful one for Newbies.
Writing a welcome message, which should be taken into deeply consideration as a Bibble for all Newbies in the forum.
Moreover, as I stated above, there are bunches of other helpful topics around the foroum.
Strongly recommend Newbies spending their time to read them first before thinking of composing, then publishing any thread.

As discussed many times around 8 months since the first day of merit system, merits are essential for the forum in its fight against spammers and shit-posters.
Of course, I know that it's hard to earn merits with my experience, but users can earn them for sure via their continuously deep contribution over time.
It takes time, need valuable contributions to get real results which might be shown via total number of merits can get.

In a word, totally agree with the OP on the warning message to avoid buying merits. This message is very important for all forum newcomers.

By the way, thanks @Theymos for his decision to change the forum, one more time.
At least, for now, the forum has not been annoyed, dumped with shitshows from Newbies. They have to get 1 merit to wear signature codes and join bounties.
In my experience, it's not too hard to get only 1 merit, so I support the new rank requirements, especially the latest adjustments on Junior Member rank requirements.
So, next question should be "how to make contribution, in particular valuable, helpful one?"
My tips are:
- Reading first and stop publishing new threads/ topics now. Next, which sorts of things I should read. Reading all helpful topics on forum rules, guides, and on bitcoin/ blockchain technologies; English vocabularies/ grammar, etc. Doing this on daily basis to improve knowledge, sharpen skills first.
This one is a very good place to get started: [GUIDES] on Bitcointalk. Index thread (until there is a dedicated subforum?)
- Publishing your threads to ask questions which have not been solved with current available threads/ topics. Or posting threads to help others solve their issues.
- Keep reading and learning via all your time you spend in the forum to help others. Help yourself first by reading and learning; then be more skilled, more expertised, more knowledgeable enough to help others. One of my most favorite way to learn in the forum is following famouse, prestigious members in order to catch their newest threads/ topics/ guides. Doing this has simultaneous effects, saving my time, boosting my learning process.

It is something like a cycle of reading, learning, contributing, so simply name it as a Read-Learn-Contribute Cycle in the BTT forum.

Let's stop complaining, start contributing instead and rank up, newcomers and newbies!

P/s:
One of good news is last week, the merit distribution increased around 90% than the figure of previous week.
Check it there with a report from @coinlocket$.
I am not sure why it happend, but I guess more merit sources added recently and more merit sources become more actively last week.
Or another theory is more slightly merit abusements from Newbies who wanted to rank up to Junior Member rank. It's just my theory, so take it easy guys.

By the way, I would like to remind that I created a topic on lists of blockchain courses (most of them are free).
Available courses on Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology from colleges and Univers

One of the good instant effects of new rank requirements which need 1 merit for Junior member rank is:
There are more Junior Members with 1 merit (earned recently) appeared in the forum than ever before.
The new requirements boosted the pace of merit exchange, and 1 merit won't solve any problem.

Of course, we all need real data to go to conclusion, but this one is what I imagine on short-term effects of new rank requirements.

For long-term aspect, as someone discussed above, 1 merit won't be able to stop spamming endemic in the forum.
It is extremely easy to get 1 merit and/ or buy it. I don't think anyone can go to any judgement on only 1 merit point, such as merit exchange, merit abusement. It does not enough to go to judgement.

Anyway, thanks @Theymos for launching it because in short-term, my eyeballs will not be annoyed with trashes from lower-ranked spammers.

Eight months after the start day of merit system and new rank requirements, I have not seen reasonable reasons to keep complaining about these twos, which obviously impressively affected most of forum users.
Personally, the forum has changed positively due to huge impacts of merit system and new rank requirements.

New comers will keep joining the forum, which in turn equals to new spammers. Not all of them will be spammers, but I believe that new spammers will join the forum for sure.

The fact is spammers will be kept at lower ranks due to merit system and new rank requirements.
Let's take it easy, let's spammers do their works (non-sense ones).
Constructive users, and someone who would like to change to be a better member of the forum will change the way they posting and contributing to forum discussions.