Did you read the OP (Opening Post) of this thread? Theymos announced the new merit system and he explained why he was implementing the new merit system. He also made a few other posts giving further rationale behind his thinking for implementing this new merit system.
Ultimately there is no exact objective standard for getting merits, and so therefore, some members are going to like your posts for differing reasons, and some of those members might have smerits that they are willing to give to your post, if they believe that you are adding something for them or maybe if you have a kind of pattern of providing information that they believe is useful ... so there could be a combination of your attempting to learn by reading the OP but also that you are engaging in various threads and posting in ways that are potentially useful and helpful to others.
I like how passionate you are to make people to be more positive in to this merit system, if it were me i would just leave them alone for they to understand the meaning of merit system.
The only logic they used for saying merit isnt working is simple, see below
I dont get merit for my quality post, mEriT iS a FaILed SySTem !
*insert spongebob meme here.
It surely is a dilemma determining whether to respond or the extent to which it is good to "help people out" or just leave them to figure out some of the seemingly basic questions. I do agree with the biblical saying that it is better to teach how to fish rather than giving fish.. but at the same time, giving a few fish here and there does not seem to be a bad thing, either...