Hey Guys,
The new merit system is not working properly and I think this can be quite dangerous for the quality of this forum.
Why? Simply because they are quite a lot very brilliant posts in this forum (especially in the local forums) which are not merited at all (not even 1 point). If you then see that they are a lot of free merit / scam threads this really dumps your motivation in creating serious content in this forum - cause its simply unfair.
Now consider there is a newbie who affords lot of time in creating some nice content in order to rank up, not merited at all. What do you think the motivation of this guy is going? Do you think he is gonna try this again?
I agree with you to some extent. As per the current situation, a member has to be active and smart as well to increase chances of getting merits. For instance, there was a thread where a senior member was offering merits for members submitting infographic. If a new member is able to do that, he has more chances as there is less competition there.