It is treated as a crime to buy/sell merit
What is crime? sources are not allowed to sell their sMerits, I think sources should sell merits but not to the shitposters, anybody who has quality post and wants to rank up, should pay to rank up to the forum.
These people have the fate of the forum in their hand and it will be determined by something much more significant than "being past member".
You should cry for a community where the fate of it's forum is in the hands of somebody like me. (fate of a single beggar who needs to rank up from a jr into a member in 2 years).
because almost nobody will ever become a merit source
Not everybody is willing to be a source, but you could if you are at least a hero member.
This is reserved for a very select few members that have proven themselves worthy of the responsibility to create our most valuable resource against spam out of thin air.
This is going to be a self moderating forum, if you could only rank up by getting merits from those few, you don't need any moderators, they must stay neutral, I believe that we should merit any reasonable and understandable post.