I was searching for news on Populous and found the bitcointalk thread. From there i reached out across the forum and have contributed from my limited area of expertise. Without that initial draw from a well attended populous thread I would likely never have come here, and those 3-4 people i've helped would be lost in their own thoughts or at the mercy of spammers and shitposters.
but that's just my point...no spammers or shitposters waste the effort to bump an account to a full member to do so and if they do we'll eventually report them
I wouldnt say no spammers or shitposters do that. There are some accounts with some serious activity, 300+, that are yet to get their 10 Merits to be a member. If they arent TRYING to get higher rank what are they doing? (Yes I'm aware that my activity highly outnumbers my merit).
My point was more that not everyone on the ANN threads are shitposters, some are really helpful and ask insightful questions that really help flesh out an organisations business proposal, and not all of them are full members. Without this community there would be a number of people that wouldn't be on Bitcoin talk actively participating in bitcoin discussion, which MAY be detrimental to Bitcoin talk. I personally like that Bitcoin talk is like a hub of positive crypto discussion, not just Bitcoin discussion. I think that the harm could outweigh the good here.