I have the same sentiments with you.
The intention of merit is to prevent spammers and encourage us to make quality posts.  However, what is happening now is instead of making posts to share your knowledge and learn from one another, the forum community is now posting for the sake of earning merits (especially the low rank members like me).

This is the link of my first thread : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4468266.msg40069856#msg40069856

Moved the above thread twice (from altcoin discussion to service discussion (altcoins) to beginners and help).  I moved it because I noticed that the merit distribution on the altcoin discussion threads are fewer compare to other threads.