I think the restricting of signatures is a great first step towards removing the financial incentive for creating multiple accounts.
It would work even better if we require more merit. I think this is a very small step in the right direction but I still think we should go further and remove signatures from Juniors as well. Then you would need ten merit to become a Member and get a signature and that's still not much to ask. That would really sort the wheat from the chaff because at the moment it's not very difficult to get one merit whether you beg, trade or buy it. Ten merit is ten times harder/more costly to get. I don't think everybody should be able to come here and earn via posting straight away because it's that that has destroyed the forum by people who have no idea what they're doing and making them get one merit is just minor a inconvenience for them. Let them earn that right, but I think we need to make it more than one merit. One is fine from going from Newbie to Junior but I don't think it's enough to have a significant impact on the quality of discussions here. It's a small spanner in the works of farmers but they can easily buy or trade the one merit which will also easily go unnoticed in a lot of cases. The ones who have been earning thousands from farming accounts/bounties with hundreds of accounts will have no issue in buying the merit then trading it between their alts so it's not much of a difference to them.
I'm just thinking how it is just one merit enough to be Jr. member and they can continue on with his job. What kind of invasion is going on meta in the last two days I suppose that 2 merit requirements for jr member rank it would be like a catastrophe for many newbies.
in any case, it is a considerably less spam hereafter merit system integrated. the new change will be reflected mostly on bounty account farmers, and I must say a great job for the one who conceived this.