Who are merit sources?
These are individual among us who applied and were selected by the Global Moderator(thymos)after so many screening, these are people with a good reputation on the forum , they are good posters, smerits are generated and shared to them to distribute to post they found fit but mind you most of these merit source dont distribute merits they allow it to decay if you ask me why I don't know.
Firstly, theymos is the forum administrator, not the global mod.
About smerit for sources, I do not think
most of them fail to use up their stash, some do due to inactivity or failure to find enough merit worthy posts which meets their criteria.
No Second Chance.
This forum doesn't tolerate nonsense they only accommodate heroes and not losers, they only want the best from you and expect you to win-win-win the day you lost any battle you are out, several good posters dedicate their lives to this forum who had thousands of good and constructive posts over the years but were kicked out for plagiarism, they had 1k good posts and 1 bad post and were send packing no second chance so you must be at your best no fluke only 100% accepted here.
The forum does not expect anyone to be a hero (whatever that is in this context), there are just a set of rules which guides the activity on the forum, and failure to keep to those rules attracts some level of punishment. Asides this, the forum is designed to be as free as possible and to accommodate the various interests of members.
Some members have gotten permanent bans reduced to signature bans on the merit of their overall contribution to the forum, so that counts for something.