I don't mind this system as a rule to fight against spammers, "bad posting" or alt accounts. My opinion is that the problem is really not enough people who can give merit. I mean this is a very active forum, there are lots of new posts in each subsection every hour. There is just not enough people to read them all, judge and give merit. One way to deal with this issue is to assign special "merit" administrators to each subsection and develop a guideline for them to give merit to everyone who deserves it. In general, it should not be "extremely difficult or next to impossible" to get merit. You should be able to gain merit from good post writing, but it does not mean that your post should be "close to genius" or "Pulitzer prize-winning" for you to gain 10 merit and up your rank. Personally, this is what I feel right now as a new-comer to this forum. 40+ "average to good" posts have not yielded me a single merit. It's not my goal of course, I enjoy writing, helping people and educating them about the crypto-world. It's just very sad that I realize someone like me can write 500 + posts and not get a single merit because...well because nobody who can give merit looked.