What happened is simple. Look at the stats. 0.13% of the users are cycling it between them because if you remove that and one tiny board their scores dump by 80%. That is not an expected figure in a system where there is anything like a balanced objective system.

It actually leads to people within that group stating it is foolish to assume some of the remaining 99.87% of users can make posts as good or better than some of the 0.13% of users. This can lead to bookmarking post histories of fav posters and spattering them with merit compounding the skewing of these scores.

Now as I have said over 10x already this is not a huge issue so long as no weight is attributed to merit scores and to use those scores as if they are scores based on objective and fair assessment of all posts against strict criteria.  Merit is useful for preventing some spammers if you leverage it in the correct way. It is a fun way to reward posts you think are good that you choose to view. Best not to draw any other conclusions from a merit score.

Now to make it simple

Is someone with 500 earned merits going to be a better poster than one who has earned 5 merits? No that is not an assumption you can make and I am not even sure if there is a super high probability of that being true either. If that 5 merit poster had earned his 5 from 5 different sources on the alt discussion board and the 500 earned it all on meta from inside the 0.13% then I would not even as a gambling person want to bet on the 500 merits guy if the decision was made by someone who reviewed all posts against some objective criteria that was proven valuable to the board.  

I have been ready to let the issue drop for quite some time but every time I see people either raising it again with fresh excuses or some strange logic claiming it would be strange it the stats were any other way then it all has to come up again.

The problem is really that the top merit hoarders are hoping somehow to becoming merit sources, DT members and MODs. This is leading to a centralised power here that should be prevented before it goes to far. Already they are close to such a goal.

If you are to have a centralised power that can crush people with Neg DT or ban them or hold them back through the merit system. Then you best hope the entire merit system is redone with objective criteria so that only the people most suitable will end up in positions to control behaviour and opinion here.