I think there should be some easy way to earn merit without being spotted by source to post quality response, probably achieving some numbers of activity for some period of time, logging in in one day earn 1 merit, curating good, quality, highest quality post, correcting non English speaker post grammar or anything that does not depends on other people giving out merit, task that members can do on their own to earn merit, probably steemit system can be employed here to increase overall effectiveness of rewarding system, right now the only way to earn merit is quality post and being spotted by merit source and the merit source must be willing and have time to give merit which make it probably only 1% of this forum members capable of, but probability of that happen probably 0.001% only as demonstrated by so many long winding post without any merit given.
I believe there is some people with quality content/idea just get put off by the restriction of their ranking although he is a good contributor
case as example:
Development team of new alt coin using new account will be limited to few post for certain period of time and no link/image allowed, if he stuck at Newbie rank probably for long period of time because nobody care to give him merit, that just hinder productive discussion.