OP, you signed up only yesterday, made few posts and you're already complaining about Merit system. Are you really new here?
You said that you don't need high rank, then why you're concerned about getting Merit? You can continue posting by being Newbie or Jr. Member without getting a lot of Merit. It's true that it's not easy to get Merit if you're not ecxeptional user, but I think it's fine - you need to put some more efforts if you want to get higher rank benefits, what's wrong with that? We want to improve quality of this forum and Merit is a motivation for users to improve quality of their content.
The chances are small whichever way you look at it, i have since starting this thread gone through a large volume of merited users and 99% of them are not posting anything special or greatly assisting the forum they are merely just posting in the correct place that users that have a lot of merit to give frequent.
Heavily disagree. Can you give us any proof of some posts that aren't "anything special" that are given merit?
I think he is right in this case. If you have famous name or great reputation here, it's easier to get Merit even if you make some average posts. I don't want examples, but I see this trend. But I don't think it's something wrong.