This might not be fair for new people, I don't know if others will ever consider to give merit to newbies. Guess I had to been registered here like 1year back to get some kind of "good" positions. Juniors and newbies are often treated poorly.
It's perfectly fair to new people. It just means that in order for you to rank up or earn Merit, you have to write high-quality posts, rather than just spam a bunch of worthless stuff. You're not being treated poorly; everyone has to write high-quality posts.
As a newbie on this forum this is the best thing that has happened to me. Instead of being classified as one of the many account boosters I can gain merits! (Achievement guys, for real) As a Gamer Chick I dig this. Should be some sort of negative merit aswell though. Scouting through the first page of almost any part of the forum it is difficult to separate the real posts from the shitposts.
If it was possible to grey out posts with negative merit and highlight those with received merit or a sub-post with received merit, that would leave other threads neutral and up to you as a reader to decide if it is worth reading or not.
Not trying to be a dick here but what does you being a "Gamer Chick" have anything to do with this topic? Why does every girl that games feel the need to announce it?