The duty of moderators on each"board" is to clean up that board/section and try and keep it as sane as possible,through deleting low content and spam posts or topics
It's not their duty to hand out merits,thats not to say they dont/do,as a matter of fact it's not anyone's duty to hand out Smerits except probably the merit sources which to an extent is their duty, and they'll only do so to worthy posts.

With or without merits,or merit giving mods or members,that definitely shouldn't deter you from coming up with the quality stuff you claim you want to, merit is just an addition,as our major purpose here is to discuss(sensibly through quality topics)
Be careful of the section you'll post your topic,otherwise it definitely may not even merits but get reported for being a spamfest