Its way negative to those who are on lower ranks like newbies and jr. members, they want to learn from bitcoin community yet they are demanded to quality postings to get merits. I think lower rank must have more sendable merits as they will give it to most useful post they read. Farming merits ? when that time comes sell merits in high price because it is your digital dignity and respect.
People are not demanded to post high quality posts, nobody is preventing anyone to post stupid posts (as long as it's not a pure spam). However, if one wants to go up in ranks, he would have to actually contribute to the community by posting good and constructive posts. That's the whole point of the system, it is supposed to be some kind of indication of the user's quality.