Why you just don't use the "report to moderator" button when doing your investigations?
I think this kind of topics should be prohibited and only allowed in special threads created by mods or stuff where you can report merit system abuse but you will not be rewarded for this with merits.
I am sure this will stop a lot of users from investigating this abuse especially low-rank members because they are doing this for merits and this is obvious. Maybe not everybody like always but most of them.
Once again I think that merit abuse should be reported only using the report button.
Briefly, this is one of the most favorable approach of merit beggars to earn merits. Serious users, especially high ranked users tend to hate spammers, merit farmers, merit exchangers, hence they tend to give their sMerits away easier to such merit-abused report.
I highly appreciate the topic author to catch those abusers and help cleaning up the forum. However, I don't think that spend most of time in the forum to do this task is the right decision.
Instead, users should focus on their learning process, spend most of their time to learn, and help other members (if they have ability to help based on their current knowledge, skills, experience). If they find abusers by chance, let's report them to moderators.
I don't think they should only focus on finding and reporting abusers during their time in the forum.
Cheers,
