Am I really going to have to set a rule saying that Newbies can't link their own post on their first day at the forum, especially if their post is all about sMerits?
Sure, you should. Real newbies are not able to know about Meta board, and have their first targets as merit hunting. If an account created, and jump instantly into meta board to beg for merits, it is not a real newbie. I am sure about that. I suggested to restrict that accounts should have more than 30-days old to be accepted. 
A newbie should not even know a merit is something that has an importance, I think a newbie can be spotted real quickly if his only purpose is to gain merit...
Just as an account with 100-200 activity and 0 merit usually isn't a real asset as well
or more a trolling person .... Actually, sowns, I think that you raise a decent question, because personally I would not conclude someone is a troll merely because they have high activity and 0 merits, yet I would presume that most active members would at least attempt to "look into the matter" in order to attempt to figure out what merits are....
On the other hand, no member needs to earn any merits if they merely want to read posts and make their own posts from time to time, and if they find little to no value in ranking up... which is not an unreasonable position, especially someone who might have an old account but logs in on an irregular basis (and maybe posts irregularly, too).
Maybe micgoossens wants to respond further, but it seems to me that he was getting at a certain suspicion that older members have with new account, and especially in recent years there has been a decently large increase in shilling, trolling and farming of btctalk accounts - and the merit system has been meant to be a vehicle that makes it more difficult, at least for the making of money off of the farming of accounts and the shit posting that had been going along with such attempts to make money off of such historical BTCtalk account farming efforts.
