I was thinking about the economy of the merit system today. Lately, I have been seeing some posts or responses that are high quality with no merits allocated. I am wondering if unspent merits are an issue? Imagine, how would someone feel if they spend 20-30 minutes on a well thought out reply and did not get acknowledged for their effort? I know users should theoretically be here for the love of the community, but we are human after all. The merit system gives users a little appreciation for time well spent.
If someone is posting expecting merits they're doing it wrong. Also I'm gonna call BS on the bolded part. As per my signature I've been trying to give merits away for this exact reason and the results are abysmal. Either there are no such posts or it's easier to complain than do something about it.
Would a good plan be to have a time limit on smerits? That way the user will feel there is a time limit, and understand that collecting them is useless? We all know that it's in our nature to accumulate.. lol.
Merit sources already have a sort of a decay built in. Imposing a time limit on other users could hurt those who are not hyperactive on the forum and I doubt it would do much in the way of encouragement to spend them. We're already being reminded on the merit page that we shouldn't be hoarding.
BTW your post title doesn't seem to have anything to do with the contents.