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.
Some people will not give you merit because they try so hard to get that number of merits, but some other people who has enough merit to give someone who is barely need a merit. Its hard to earn merit indeed but it is for the forums good, to feel the spammers that they are not fit in this forum.