You will always think merit is an hindrance to raising your rank if you just make a post or thread isn't there any useful information for others, the English language is not understood by others and you just focus on the merit that will make your encumbrance. Sometimes you can also get merit with 'joke' post but the content of joke have a strong information to the thread you are commenting on.

I do not have a lot of merit, you can berate me for that reason. But I always see from people who get merit, and I learned about it and made a conclusion about how to get merit. And I am a person who has never criticized the merit system, most importantly I can contribute to this forum, it's enough for me.