Simple inference for those cases, they are merit beggars.
I don't deny the fact that they tried composing as good threads as possible (I don't want to fall into discussion on whether their threads are really good ones or not; but most cases, their threas fall further behind good threads).
After publishing each 'good' thread, they watch it again and again, every hours, every day to see whether the thread received merits or not. The approach makes them tired (and me too, if I do it), then they jumped directly to Meta board and started complaining, moaning, crying about merit system, merit sources, drawbacks of the system

Just for fun, and hope that my thread won't make readers feel annoying.