I would like to suggest you a new policy for you to consider.
Instead of letting people beg for merit, you could allow people to suggest posts that deserve Merit points but are not their own.
This can be done only by a high ranking member for a post made by a low ranking member.
This should make sure that shitposters and low rankers would not be able to abuse this policy or end up spamming you.
I considered this, but decided that there are too many sockpuppet accounts on this forum. There's a high likelihood that I'd get flooded with requests from people suggesting posts of their own which they've created under other userIDs.
Instead, I decided that whenever I've got the time, I'll:
- Check the posting history of anyone I've recently awarded merit, to see if they have other posts also deserving of merit
- Ask other users whom I respect if there are any posts or users they think I should consider
- Look through the "request merit here" or "earn merit here" threads that merit sources have created, and read through the posting history of lower ranking users that apply in those threads
- Look through the merit stats for users, posts, and threads that have recently earned merit and then check the posting history of users that have earned some merit recently