I think begging for merit is demeaning, and not something that members should do. I've started to ignore members who beg for merit in a post.
Where do you draw the line on begging? Does someone have to explicitly say "give me merit!" or could they be complaining about the merit system and sharing their "woe is me" story about how they were once so close to the next rank and now have to earn 100s of merit to get there?
Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2828412.msg29000145#msg29000145Shouldn't you ignore anyone responding to those requests for merit, be it directly or through as sob story?