[...] merit points that can be earned by helping others or creating interesting topics.
It's a lie. To earn merit points you have to do anything, that merit sources likes. As we know, usual users (especially newbies) are not merit sources, so, doing anything which helping them is absolutely pointless.
My impression is that most of high rank users don't check frequently the altcoins sections nor local boards. [...]
But most of new users likes these sections and they don't need anything else on this forum. As i mentioned earlier, merit system is unfair to new users and stupid.