Your assessment is basically wrong,not just cos I'm trying to leap to the support of anyone,but because I'll be using my own situation as a case study and I guess it'll take you back to the drawing board..
My account is barely 4 days old, and I've received 4 merits within that very short space of time("from high ranked members),that's just like approximately 1merit per day, my posts/comments definitely isn't the best,nor is it top notch, it just happens to strike one or two chords when it's seen
Noobs fail to understand that no one is under any obligation to rain merits on you, if a member wouldn't hand out merits to you, then we have the merit sources(and if they do not hand out merits to you, it's high time you go and check your ineptitude)...
You do not demand for merits,you earn it, and you definitely won't be earning any for this shitty post you've scribbled down here
I do not know if there were any lower ranks could be able to receive lots of merits like this.
The real and honest question should be how many percentage of noobs can actually take out their time to come up with something worth meriting,a large percent are simply lazy and cannot wait to get that elusive one merit and go right back into spamming