Definitely Yes jerry! The hoard behind getting the merit points is very brutal. everyone wants merit points for the higher post on the forum & trying to all the tactics to get the merit points because something is not going right.
I have seen some posts which are getting merit points for the rubbish. May be some posts have some meaning that describe only by the person. But taunting a person for a post may also give you 8 merit points. I am amazed.
And one post got 18 merit points from 5 person for writing nothing.
The reason why they get merit even though their post is rubbish is because they abuse merit system. Some members in this forum won't give merit even they have lots of smerits they won't just merit someone that has reasonable and understandable high quality post that deserves a merit instead they sell their smerits or exchange smerit to smerit.