You mean alot less spam? Anyway, about the merit... I think there should be some tweaks done to the current system. I believe that right now the problem is that most of the users aren't getting merit with they're posts(even if the posts are good)... Maybe because other users are still not used to this new feature, maybe because they expect a half of a page post to be eligible to win merit... All i know is that getting higher rank will be much harder than before, even if your posts are good