I can not judge whether this merit system works properly or not. After the implementation of spam merit system began to disappear, yes, it is very good but many also feel disappointed with the merit system because it is not going well, there is even an issue that says that the merit system abused, whether it is true or not I am not sure
Merit system has shown amazing, strong effects on users, especially on account farmers, spammers, and free-money takers in the forum. Since the lauch of merit system, they have to adapt to survive (by which I mean to rank up). Part of them ranked up with their good adaption (legally ones); most of them fall further behind and stucked at their current rank (might be stucked forever if they don't change to contribute more to the forum). Part of them tried exchanging merits like merit farmers and was tagged, reported, and banned (permanently) like those ones (
More mass merit farmingTo conclude, there are current merit abusers but they will be eliminated totally in the near future due to amazing tracing effects of merit system.