I will attempt to summarise all the questions here, along with my own.
1. What is the legal defination of "merging", the definition as we all use it is fairly loose, some may consider taking the good players of a defeated enemy a merge, others might not. It is a definate grey area.
2. When a tribe is "disqualified" from domination what exactly does this entail?
2a/ Are a disqualified tribes villages removed from the equation as if they were barbs, allowing a tribe with 80% of the remaining villages to win automatically?
2b. When a disqualified tribe disbands, are their players/villages un-disqualified from domination?
2c. when the disqualified tribe disbands, what are the members allowed to do without being disqualified once more?
The first question amounts to "please specify the exact parameters we need to work within", I expect that with this rule change the developers/whoever made the change assume that it will not be broken, but for that to happen we need to know where the line is.
The second question amounts to "what exactly happens when the rule is broken, and what can the rulebreakers do to rectify the situation and continue playing and fighting", its all well and good to hope a rule is not broken, but this is the internet, online gamers will always break rules and hope to get away with it. When they get caught out doing this, the long-term punishment is unclear. are they still able to win somehow? or must they jump through certain hoops to be back in the running