Merit-give-away contests should have as strict rules as possible to find deserved winners. Nevertheless, as you and another guy concerned, Merits can circulate in hands for account farmers. Over time, they are out of sMerits if they are not able to earn merits by themselves from contribution to the forum.
Well in my opinion, with or without this kind of giveaway and other contests, merit still have a chance to go into merit farmer's hands.
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We just need to be smarter to give merits to people who deserves it.
I hate to say this, but account farmers should be wipen out at any extent. They only should keep joining the forum if they change to be real constructive users, at least I hope so. Some of them might change, and that is positive impacts of merit system on the forum in general picture.
They are getting smarter day by day and it is hard to find out which one is a farmer which one is not, but with this kind of action the good ones have a chance to rank up, so i dont find this kind of action as a wrong action.