I have a question to ask to whoever who is reporting/tagging users for merit abusal.
Here's the deal. I noticed that users are spending way more time on patrolling people who are sending and receiving merits than giving merits to deserving people. Spend that time on searching for good posts, learn something new, after all we all came to learn about bitcoin, not whine about the merit system or report *users* for abusing the merit system. The system has just been introduced and users are very demotivated or are feeling degraded, and having a sense of fear in their minds, that they may receive negative feedback, even though some of them may be innocent.
Everyone has their own views and opinions, if someone finds a post worthy to receive merits and others don't, that doesn't mean abusal. Lets just wait and see how far abusal goes. I agree signature campaigns were abused way too much because of lack of corrective action but this is merit system. People shall face consequences in the long term.
Though some cases may really seem to be abusal, why not wait some more time, let the merit system be in place and intact, if any one really has to abuse it, let them do so, theymos shall take action, like he has already mentioned:
Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.
So, why not let the merit system to be welcomed much, give users a chance to elaborate themselves. What say, people?