I think it will be a good idea, My suggestion is maybe they can add assistant moderator in this forum which having a huge amount of merits that can distribute to all deserving. We also know that moderators are busy and maybe this is the answer to that issue. Assistant moderator will be a big help to lessen people's that abuse merit and it can enhance the efficiency of the whole forum. It will be a tool to balance the system I guest.
If you do not know yet, there is something like this: there are special members, called merit sources. There are merit sources which were chosen at the start of the merit system and there are those who were given this status after they gave 10 quality post which were not merited before. This should in theory help with merit distribution but this does not help with 2 problems in my view.
1) The merit abuse between familar members and moreover between alternative accounts.
2) Also this does not help to clear threads from shit posts ( i believe that there should be merits given for example 10 successfully reported low quality posts but this on other hand would put an additional strain on moderators)