While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.
You didn't award merit to a quality post, you gave merit out of pity.
Found the cause of our difference of opinion. It's not pity, but I do have the opinion that 100 reasonable posts are worth the same as 1 excellent post.
In my view, that's still good for the forum because it increases activity of the members. If I want to read excellent blog posts, I can also go to Medium. On Bitcointalk, I enjoy reading the discussion that follows and the interaction between the members.
The people I have merited have not made the single excellent post, but surely contributed to the discussion with at least 100 reasonable posts. That does deserve a jr. member rank in my opinion, to reward them for their efforts (even though I wouldn't be able to point at a single post). It's only the second lowest rank
Either way, I think we can close the discussion with the conclusion that it's good that we all have merit to give and everyone has their own preferences for giving it out. Diversity will make the forum thrive.