This is already the third case of a malicious merit source in a short time, and there are likely to be more.
Only removed, no demerit action on spammers that are not deserved with their ranks.
Five years are long time enough for ranking up many spammers.
From 21171 sourced merit in 30 days to 34139 merits in 30 days, it was about 13k increase and it has last for about 5 years. Even now, total sourced merits each 30 days are still much higher than the figure in June 2020.
More source merits, more merits per merited post while quality looks to not increase, but decrease significantly and there are actually reasons.
Dataset +----------------------------------+
| date meritsource smerit |
|----------------------------------|
1. | 01aug2026 85 30972 |
2. | 07jun2025 88 33138 |
3. | 15sep2024 109 33190 |
4. | 01may2024 109 32990 |
5. | 22mar2024 108 32890 |
6. | 28nov2023 109 33140 |
7. | 31jul2023 109 33940 |
8. | 11jul2022 110 33989 |
9. | 06jul2021 111 34139 |
10. | 28jun2020 97 21171 |
There is currently no such thing as a "demerit". I'm hoping that the positive merits alone will be fine. I could add demerits pretty easily later on if necessary, though.
When?
I'm still thinking about ways to resolve this issue, possibly involving rejiggering how merit works.
