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.
Maybe thymos teaches us how to become generous to the other members. Keeping that sMerits will never be included with your merits rather than that we are going to share it and it Will come come back to the next sMerit. If your lucky to have so many sMerit then just share it to everybody with whom you choose deserving with their posts. Dont be afraid of doing it so, if it Will Help others to level UP. Good luck to everybody.
I agree, theymos wants eliminate/lessen the redundancy of threads and replies that's why they create this merit system. I think this is very effective, because thru help of this merit system more participants now are conducting research before posting. I observed it because most of the posts I read now have a lot of senses, moreover the posts now I read had more constructive compared before.