Truly said.I will say it is side effects of merits instead of bringing overall quality it introduced us with few statisticians.
But this data that had been analyzed are helpful and the people who are posting the data have contributed much of their time just to create that post. From the collection of data (bpip.org, and merit.txt.xz), creating of graphs and charts, and translating the data all of which takes up a lot of time and all I can say is that they are both helpful and highly informative to all users that is why this kinds of posts deserves a lot of merits.
I am not questioning the effort and I acknowledge their effort also. Doing the analysis correctly and publishing it is big task.
When Theymos introduced the Merit he did not think that most of the merit will be used in this way.
Actually Vlad230 express my feeling very well.
Yes, you are right. Some of them didn't earn merit for anything else but merit analysis which is sad.
My opinion is that the people whom deserve to rank up should be mainly knowledgeable in crypto currency, not in how the forum works.
They're missing the point of this forum.