If you did not see yet how the merit system can affect shitposters and hasn't yet achieved his purpose then you should wait. This system is coordinate to achieve his goal slowly, maybe in few months you can see a high improve in posts and topics in the whole forums, it's matter of time, by the way, I think the purpose of this system is to decrease, not to eradicate shitpost from the forum.
Agreed.
I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that the merit system was introduced with an "influx" of sMerit that came with all accounts across the forums, based on that user's rank, by default. Again, as others have mentioned, once these sMerits have dried up, the system will become effective in keep shitposters and sigspammers at bay. Yes, they can easily create dozens of multis for the sole purpose of merit-farming, but at that point, who is really going to take the time to create constructive posts (enough to get merited) in order to send their many alts a merit here and there? It really sounds like a huge investment of time and energy being wasted to distribute sMerits across a network of alt accounts that may or may not be sold in... a couple of months or years for a few bucks?
Come on. Anyone who is saying that the system will not help decrease the shitposting on the forums hasn't thought past the short term.
I'm curious to see the overall activity stats from January of this year compared to January of 2019 when the time comes. I'm willing to bet that user sign-ups will be at an all-time high, but the activity per capita will be at an all-time low. We'll have the merit system to thank for this.
Think long term, folks.