The merit system is not working, look the merit points of people on the forum, it does not move (even for the more relevant posts), the forum established a system which was suppose to penalize newcomers flooding the forum with useless post, but the forum penalize itself, good luck everybody, If you think people will give you merit points for free you are mistaken.
The merit points system works well. Even though I haven't got any merith yet. In the Russian-speaking branch merit get even harder than in English. To earn merit I began to learn English. Began to do translations of interesting topics in Russian. I want to achieve success and wish you the same.