You keep bringing up the "abuse".
How are they going to abuse you? By ignoring you? That is an abuse?
Using the power to unlimited merit your friends (or alt accounts) while other users are withheld from receiving merit points, while they may post equal or even more qualitative posts, I call abuse, yes. It is again, like the trust system, subjectively determined by a few chosen ones.
Who exactly is abusing it this way? Don't be shy, spill the beans.
Also, given that sMerit is effectively pointless after Legendary status would it not be worth considering making it only giftable to ranks below legendary, that way it at least encourages the progression for some of the lower ranks? Granted some legendary members will want to accumulate it as an accolade.
Legendaries can (and may be more inclined to) spread sMerit to others, so it's not pointless.
I think you perhaps misunderstood my point, I am well aware the Legendary ranks will have much sMerit to spread around compared to other ranks. My point is that once you have reached Legendary rank you have nowhere left to go after that, if someone then gives you some merit, it is effectively wasted on your account.
That's not quite correct. I still get 0.5 sMerit for each merit, and I will spend those sMerits.