the merit system shouldn't discourage users to share their view on things either. You make thing someone may not agree with your post? Do not worry it's not like down votes are a thing in this forum yet. As long as you are posting up to date relevant information and most importantly original content then you should expect to pickup merit points along the way. You shouldn't expect to gain several hundred merit points in a small time frame unless you have contributed greatly.

The merit system it working as a whole although it has caused a few little problems here and there like for instance many people are copy and pasting older topics or older replies and trying to pass them off as their own. This is quickly being regonised and dealt with either by defaulttrust or the moderators.

maybe what we should consider is a system where people who do not have merit can flag a post up for review by a merit source. I think this way merit sources wouldn't have to worry about finding posts actively and can rely on the rest of the community to find them and their job would only be to distribute them fairly.