Actually yeah that's not a bad idea....
It's actually pretty good.
Maybe they could do something with the color of those coins you get on top of your username--maybe change them to red or some other color, and perhaps make that a function of merits? That would make users stand out from the pack.
I'd suggest that for every extra 250 merits you get another of those semi-coloured coins next to your name, ending with the legend title at 2000 merits.
Maybe also onec they come up with a design for how good people are at reporting posts (or at least how many good reports they have) we could think of something theymos would have in mind and likely accept for an additional merit coloum as a printed score takes a lot longer to look at than an icon "an image says a thousand words" can be true in this case (or at least a certain number of digits)...