There is something else besides the good posts.
If you build yourself a reputation of helpful person, sometimes you get merit for posts that are not so helpful but people can easily recognize you.
The difficulty for the newbies is to build up a positive reputation. Often those who are after the merit fail,because all their posts are to hunt merit and it's easy to get exposed as a merit hunter and their reputation is over.

So try to be a genuine user, don't chase the merit nor ranking, build yourself a positive reputation then the community will accept you.