Thanks for starting this topic because many people including me had those doubt about what merit is ,
It's actually a pretty good step made by the Bitcointalk forum to
avoid pointless and irrelevant posts by people who just post for activities.You can learn everything about merit here :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0Especially those like yourself that just posted the link already provided in the first reply of this thread. The question has been answered there is no need to keep repeating it.