We need to get away from the idea that if a person only has one leg and a pregnant sister, then we need to award merits. You are only doing it so that they can spam the forum, and earn a bit of extra cash. Merits are for people who support the forum, and provide helpful and informative posts.  This doesn't mean that you only give merits to posts that would win a Pulitzer prize, but they should certainly be above average, and of benefit to the forum. For some time now, I've been looking at the post histories of some members, and where they make consistent posts that encourage further discussion, I've been awarding merit for posting behaviour, rather than just for individual posts.