You should probably know by know that openly asking for merits could easily get you in trouble, most people will just set you on ignore and not see you posts at all, while in the same time admins could easily decide to lock your account.
Yes, I got the same problem. Rules say no excessive begging for merit.
Now I try to ask with pm most. Not easy to collect some so far.
Even if you write a good post, merit doesnt come itself, because most people are still not used to give/take merit. Hope that will change
PM or public you still qualify for account lock down.
If something is against rules then it's the same no matter If you ask for it publicly or trough internal messaging system.
You don't need to tell people that is hard to get some points, and as you probably know good post doesn't automatically qualify you for the points neither gives you the right to send people messages with such requests.