But I disagree with the gatekeeping argument. Why should only a few decide which content is good and which is "not worthy enough". Why not giving out a portion of Merit to every account older than 3-6 months and let the masses decide?
I wanted to clarify some issue here. I believe when you said "few", what you meant by that is the smerit sources right?
As far as I understand, smerit sources should be limited to some
qualified users that have the ability to judge whether a post has a quality or not. Without this, then the entire system won't work as spammers, account farmers, and etc can easily give merit to their "own" account.
You can apply to be the merit sources if you wanted to. No exclusivity here.
He is not only talking about the smerit sources, members who has a lot of sMerits are also included in that "few". I think what the OP is trying to point out is the inability of lower ranks to give merit to posts that are worthy of getting merit. They can't send merits unless they will receive some from others members, but that should not be a problem if they have the ability to post a helpful and informative one.