Nope, you don't HAVE to give merit to anyone. There is a good diversity amongst the members, and this means that reasonable/good posters stand a good chance of receiving merit from somebody here. I don't like posters who slow down my reading, so they don't get merit from me. Others seems to prefer the aesthetics of a post that is designed to be an art form. You take your chances if you think you can jazz up mediocre content with pretty formatting.