I think that most merit sources do not need any merit.
Actually merit sources should not need merit at all. To avoid conflict of interest.
I don't think it's very fair to the lower ranked merit sources to prevent them from ranking up, just because they are helping with the distribution of merits.
Of course that would be unfair.
I didn't mean to offend anyone. I didn't knew there were low rank members who were merit sources.
Maybe because I am not a native speaker I may have been misunderstood.