The merit system is not working, look the merit points of people on the forum, it does not move (even for the more relevant posts), the forum established a system which was suppose to penalize newcomers flooding the forum with useless post, but the forum penalize itself, good luck everybody, If you think people will give you merit points for free you are mistaken.
I think that this is a test run so far. I really like this ranking system. There will be less spam and flooding on the forum. It will be much easier to find the information you need. But unfortunately, the beginning is not very successful. The system of awards will need to be reviewed. We need to wait for a while. I am confident that in the future everything will be ok.