I agree with this approach. I considered giving merit proportional to activity, but I decided not to because doing so would probably give far more undeserved merit than deserved merit in total. But undoubtedly some people got screwed by this, and if they have decent posts, by all means, give them the 250 or 500 merit that they need to rank-up.

I also agree with the idea of (free) "reviewer" topics in general, for finding high-quality posts that went unnoticed. Barcode_ created one in the Chinese section, as well.