How do I get some merits? And what is the advantage of a bitcointalk community member being merited?
I would like to elaborate a bit more on the above answer, as I believe this topic deserves a bit more detailed answer:
As per the original post from Theymos the "Merit system was introduced to improve posts quality", based on this explanation
you can get Merits by being there for other users, sharing you knowledge, helping others to answer their questions and by providing quality information. I would say you should stick with answering quetions on other users threads. Later on
when you learn more you could share your knowledge by starting your threads and offering structured information for others.
Defitinely the biggest incentive to rank up in account level are bounties. Because the higher your membership level is, the better chance of you getting accepted for high quality bounties is. The reason being, that
higher level accounts get more space in their signature (and more space for bounty promotion), but also have
much higher prestige, when it comes to spreading word about project in question (via their signature).
Hope this helps and that I explained it clearly. Happy Merit hunting.