It might be too early to call, but the downward trend is resuming.
That's surprising, especially after Theymos upped the sMerit allotments for merit sources and added new ones. Personally, I have never given out as many merits in a one month time period than I have in July. I started off the month with 1000 source sMerits, and as of this moment I think I have about 145 left.
I wonder what the problem is. Are merit sources being stingy, or does the problem lie with members who
aren't merit sources? It's all well and good that I gave out 800+ merits this month, but if the members who received them don't pay them forward....then there's a problem. Unfortunately, there's not much any of us can do to make anyone give out merits if they don't want to.
I'd hate to have to factor in someone's merit-giving history before granting them merits, and it's not something I've thought of before and don't intend to do--but if I'm basically sending merits to a dead end, I'm not helping the merit system as a whole, and that's something I very much want to do.
In addition, there are 2 new Legendary and 4 new Hero Members this week.
That seems absurdly low, but I don't know what the data looked like before the merit system started. DdmrDdmr, do you have any of that data compiled by any chance, i.e., how many new Hero and Legendary members there were on a weekly basis prior to January 2018?