People have been complaining since day 1, nothing new here. It is true that some people deserve zero merits, but it doesn't feel like there are enough merits for the posts that do deserve them. A lot of worthy posts go unmerited, and if you have to find a merit distribution thread to get it, then that is a problem in my humble opinion.
Complainers will never get any merit if they keep complaining about drawbacks of merit system and new rank requirements.
Just ignoring them, let they do what they want.