Merit sucks. I've been studying threads and posts and now at this point it's obvious that people don't award merit to others for good posts, they reward it because they know each other on here. Very sad system. It needs to be trashed or redone.
Oops! I found your post by chance. There is link to thread on negative side of merit system:
There are both negative and possitive sides of merit system. In my thread, I have discussed about how the behaviours of higher-ranked users will (might) change over time due to merit system.