I was just scrolling around Meta, reading about the new merit system and I am seeing so many negative posts complaining about the system that is meant to really improve things around here. I personally am digging the new changes and seeing all of these people uncomfortable just tells me that there is great change occurring.

While I see there are a few threads where users are throwing around their merit to worthy posts, there is still a valid concern about there being a lack of merit to be distributed in relation to how many high-quality posts truly get put out each day by members nobody recognizes. Now this will of course get remedied over time as more merit sources are created and more generous users accumulate merit in their own hands.

However I have a proposal to get the juices flowing and ease some of the fears about distribution. It does not seem to be the world's biggest secret who a few of the merit sources are (Lutpin, for example), and there are many other users with a ton of merit to go around. My proposal is a contest of sorts; we could have users enter their posts or their profiles and after a given amount of time (or every so often) there is/are winner(s) chosen to receive a merit reward. Meaning the greatest poster(s) every week or so would be given a Merit Bounty for their high-quality, significant or contributory posts; preferably from public Merit sources or a pool or merit generated from willing participants around the community.

I'm very interested in thoughts on developing this further, volunteers, contrarians and merit sources are needed. I don't know how you all feel about this, so let me know how you feel; let me know if I've even explained this well enough for you to make up your mind. The parameters are negotiable and discuss-able, but I just have the basic framework and a few different routes/options to play with.