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
I believe that can be frustrating, but a good thing. It filter out the spammer and people with low quality content. Now people will be putting out more useful content. The only unfair problem I see with this is the unfair merit that might be distributed. People who make post with quality will probably get no merit and people with crappy post will probably get merits.