First of all, mods aren't responsible for giving out merits--the community as a whole is. Second, whether you earn merits or not depends on basically two factors, 1) Whether your post is good or not, and 2) Your post has to be seen by someone with sMerits to give.
You're fortunate to have gotten as many merits as you have. Many members with your rank and post count have gotten ZERO merits, and they're not likely to earn any for the rest of their miserable careers on bitcointalk. It's not supposed to be easy to earn merits; that's the whole point of the system. If it was easy, it wouldn't prevent shitposters from ranking up and the whole system would be useless.
Thank you for the clarification. I haven't been around here enough to fully understand the roles of moderators. Admittedly, in the back of my mind maybe I want to be "validated". lol. I'll work on that.
You have become quite synonymous to making post that relates to merit or smerit
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Could your interest be a merit hunt in disguise?
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I strongly disagree with you on that one. Check out my posts.