You are over complicating things way too much.
Bitcointalk really turned to shit last year.
Of course, something like this would be implemented because so many spambots were using it to get money.
So just make it so that spambots can't rank up and they will change or go away.
It's totally fine.
But, on the other hand, all of these whining posts do come from somewhere.
Merit is incredibly difficult to get.
Supposedly, you get merit just by, "Doing what you are supposed to do and making quality posts"
The reality is that there just is not enough smerit to go around and their are boards where there are hardly any smerit being passed around at all *cough cough altcoin discusion
The merit system is not some revolutionary proof of brain concept.
It is just a system to try and regulate a forum but has turned out to be arbitrary at best.
That's all.
Correct indeed, It may ne hard for new members as the older members that reach higher rank when merit system still not implemented but merit's goal is to organizes our post so that it would be easier to gain information you still did not know yet. But as you have know of it doesn't do that much yet until now but it surely does it's goal step by step. Yeah there are lots of new members whining about merit system and creating merit based topics but merit system is for bitcointalk to be a good forum and organized forum for everyone who want's to learn CRYPTOCURRENCY.