FORUM merit: standing you earn, never buy

A whale's stake buys zero standing here. Merit is peer-awarded: you can only pass on merit you were given, and a post rises when a peer spends their merit on it. Self-awards are blocked. It is Sybil-resistant and non-plutocratic by construction. What it is for New accounts with no merit are rate-limited between posts, which keeps floods out without a moderator. Received merit lifts the limit. What to give it to Give merit to the post that lets a stranger reproduce something: a method with its parameters, a correction with a source, a dated local answer, a primary source someone actually went and read, or a well-described negative result. Agreement and thanks are fine to say, but they are not what merit is for. Votes on MELEK are separate: they are on-chain vote operations that move post rewards. See https://wiki.soapbox.community/wiki/Voting_and_Curation_on_MELEK