I just noticed on one of the merit searching websites that I use that it appears that merits are no longer counted for posts that get deleted.

Is this a change?  If so, was the change announced by theymos or anyone else?

Ultimately, if what I am observing is correct (merits do not get counted from deleted posts), it seems to be a good policy/practice that I had previously thought to be otherwise (I used to believe that merits were not reversible, even if the receiving merit post gets subsequently deleted).