the most part it is thankless
I disagree: I get to help improve this forum! I get spammers banned, abusers tagged, and contributers merited. That's all the reward I need.
As long as a merit source is not going to benefit monetarily from giving a merit, It isn't merit abuse. Leave us the fuck alone!
Who's "us" in the statement above? I'm a Merit source, I barely search for posts to merit, but do it anyway when I stumble upon anything worth meriting. I haven't seen anyone attack me on my choices of meriting users.