Few comments (while I'm still scanning through the thread):
1 - Trading merits may not be allowed, but it'll surely happen. Therefore your spendable balance is worth something (it also appreciate the value of your account), that encourages hoarding.
2 - What's the current, rough number of merit sources (MS)? If regular (non-MS) members are not rushing to spend their merits, then it would be mainly on MS to be responsible for ranking up worthy members, so you need to make sure that MS are present on every board (including local boards). Also, if I send 2 merits to someone and he can only spend 1 of that, that means 1 gets destroyed, that creates scarcity and the distribution will rest predominately on MS members.
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Each source has a different limit per 30 days. The current average is 185, and in total up to 8125 merit could be created per month.
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This seems waaay too low. And shouldn't this limit be somewhat flexible and tied to total activity/new registrations etc?
We could use some clear guidelines on how to use the system, i.e.:
- there's a large number of posters who are genuine (not only here for profit) but not outstanding in creating good content (they would ask sensible question, participate and be genuinely interested in discussions etc). Should members (especially MS) be encouraged to tip such users for their general "an OK" level of posting, just to help them rank-up, or should we just accept that vast majority could never reach higher ranks? I don't see anything particularly wrong in the latter.
- example: signature campaign manager promises to send 5 merits at the end of the period to each participant, as a reward for their constructive posting (if they haven't been kicked-out during, that means manager must've seen them as constructive). Should this be allowed, or viewed as "merit trading" (merit points in exchange for advertising)?
- if I know a member, think his quality is "OK" but not outstanding, can I send him 10 merits to any post as a reward for overall contribution (to help him rank up), or will this be seen as suspicious and potential merit-trading, for which I could get red-tagged?
Edit:
...There is no point in hoarding sMerit; keeping it yourself does not benefit you, and we reserve the right to decay unused sMerit in the future.
From any signature-camp participant perspective: not sharing points benefits me, as I make it harder for new ones to rank up and become a competition for me, making it easier to get the spot in campaign and could keep payment rates higher. It also increases the value of my account.