Most people became interested in Bitcoin not because they believe that it has a chance to become much more widely used in the future, but because they think that they still can become millionaires thanks to it. If you were them, you wouldn't bother with understanding something that would take them a lot of time to study.

I have to admit that merit system motivated me to read more "serious" sections and try to help others. Even though, merit system was introduced week before I was supposed to rank up to Full Member, I was not complaining at all. In fact, now I'm thankful to whoever came up with this idea (can't remember if it was Theymos). We can't prevent some things from happening e.g. selling merit, but it should be less common in the next months.