Go to the patrol page. Scroll the page as fast as you can until you find a post that has more than 5 lines. Open the profile of who posted, see if the last 5 posts were larger than 3 lines with a valid and original content. Copy and paste in google to check if it is not a copy and past.
If all is correct and it seems that this newbie will help the forum, give him 10 merits.
The length of the post determines the quality among the newbies where as the high ranked members can get merits for couple of words. If all is correct and it seems that this newbie will help the forum, give him 10 merits.
Surely this can be a tip but if someone wants to be a merit source they need to find the quality posts maybe it will be a tough task in this forum.
