Why are users begging for merit? To look on one side, it seems to look like farming. But there is an other side too. Have a look, most of the people who have high amounts of merits are the ones who are posting in meta, whilst hardly any one is giving merit to those who are posting in other discussions in other boards. Users are impatient on the fact that the merit system has just been introduced and they just want to rank up and repeat the process of signature abusal.