Yeah, I've noticed some very good quality posts never receive any merit whatsoever. Its not like they aren't being seen either. There's a few posts in the serious discussion section which I think deserve a few merit. The recent discussion on the tax debate has some interesting replies.
Probably a bad example because they have received quite a bit of merit since I last checked, but there's a few other topics, and replies in that section which seem to just be glanced over.
I think the issue is two fold. Most people don't have many merits so have to be frugal with them, and posts can get buried very fast. Even threads with worthwhile discussion happening where gems can be found they quickly get buried by dozens of users making generic one/two liners. When those users are getting paid as Juniors or whatever rank they automatically have it doesn't really matter to them and there's no real incentive for them to improve. That's why I'm strongly pushing for a merit requirement for users to become Juniors. If we removed their signatures completely then thus would force users to have to get ten merit and become a Member before they could even earn in the first place. I think this will have a huge effect on the quality of posts here as bots and spammers will get no where or not very far without getting the merit in whatever capacity.
Yes, @nullius will maintain records for quite a while, bearing in mind both the quality of the posts and that there was a merrier merit awarding possibility closer to the beginning of the Merit System kick-off than now. Only recently have a few users surpassed him on total aggregate received sMerits, and months have gone by since he was last active.
I'm sure he will be eclipsed soon, especially as he's MIA now. Though as I mentioned above the lack of people giving merit is an issue. If it wasn't for Welsh giving me some yesterday I would have broken my combo despite writing 9 or so pretty decent lengthy posts (in my opinion). Again, I'm not going to lose sleep over merit as it's largely irrelevant to me now but there are plenty of others possibly even more deserving who will go umerited. Quality users will get there eventually anyway, but 'average' or even above average users will likely struggle.