That thread is almost funny looking back at it today and seeing how many merits were so freely handed out for posts that were just mediocre. I'm pretty sure bitcointalk will never see anything like that again.
As to OP's point, I'd say 50 merits
from a single member would certainly be excessive, but I doubt anyone would get tagged. I'm not sure who Johny Depp is talking about, though. It would be helpful for him to mention specifics and not broad generalities, because suspected merit abuse obviously depends on the circumstances.
I've seen a lot of campaign threads and ANNs where the OP gets enormous amounts of merits. Hell, even DarkStar_
got 8 merits for the Chipmixer campaign thread, and there have been other bounty managers who've gotten far more than that.
What can you do? I wouldn't call it merit abuse; it's more like gratitude, and members have to have a certain amount of freedom to do what they want with their sMerits. This is why I'm not putting on the gloves and stepping into the ring with suspected merit abusers. It's not usually black-and-white like it is with account sales and whatnot. As I said recently, though, I'm glad there are other DT members who are tagging the obvious cases of abuse.
Edit:
Giving 50 Merits to ANN topic isn't a best way to spend Merits, but I don't know can we call it as Merit abuse. Users are free to choose how they want to spend their Merit. IMO, it's better to give Merits to ANN threads than send to alt accounts or sell on black market.
Maybe you can show us ANN about which you're talking about?
Dang, you basically just beat me to the punch and said very succinctly what I just wrote. Anyway, without knowing who OP is talking about, all of this is just blabbering. The answer to his question is that the member
might get tagged. That might not be what OP wants to hear, but that's the truth of the matter.
