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A contribution from my side would be a bunch of merits, as per the discussion in this thread merit is one of the most important part to vote for the DT and change it. I have some smerits to award for all the trust abuse supportive here.
You need 10 earned merits to vote right?
I can provide you with that to be eligible for voting. [...]
Is stingers still a merit source?
Not anymore. That's clear abuse, awarding merit for political reasons rather than any idea of quality. Only because he was a source, I effectively undid those merit sends. If he had not been a merit source, I still would've blacklisted anyone who got into DT1 through that type of shenanigans.
I can't say I disagree with this decision, however I think this highlights a problem with the current DT system, and to a lesser extent, the merit system.
I reviewed the posts he gave merit to on Feb 5, and I would say a good 40% of the posts reasonably had a fairly high amount of effort put into them, another 40% were good enough to receive merit if someone was being aggressive in giving away merit, and two or three were not reasonably deserving of merit (unless you agreed with what they were saying). This is a problem because the only reason he was caught was because he was
openly trying to meddle with the trust system voting. If he had not made this public statement, no one would have any idea what he was doing, and all that merit would be sent for political reasons.
On the merit system, I have seen few controversial posts with large amounts of effort put into them that have merit, especially from merit sources. Conversely, I have seen many reasonably low-effort posts that make a "popular" statement with merit from multiple people.