To the OP.

You are falling into the same boring rhetoric and received "wisdom" that appears fairly regularly. I'm here again with another 250+ merits to award, and I'm going to have to spend an hour or so to try to find some good posts to reward. I'll be lucky to be able to give away more than 50 of them. No doubt many of them will go to members who already have over 2,000 merits, and some say that will be a waste. I don't think this is true, because they will probably be experienced and knowledgeable members, and their posts will be helpful and informative. In my opinion it is important to give them encouragement and recognition for the benefits for the forum that they provide. Does it matter if they earn money from their signatures? Hopefully they value their reputations enough to promote good, honest sponsors, and this in itself is another benefit for forum readers.

Of course merit sources have a delegated power to assist in the promotion of good and active newer members - this was the reason the merit system was introduced. Trying to fight the current system is more of an indication of a lack of self-analysis, than a fault in the system. There are numerous threads and senior members who are more than willing to help other members, and this is one of the strengths of this forum. Interests and skills are extremely diverse here, so if you can't find a peer group, then you really need to step back and consider your motivations. The forum isn't a faucet to reward graffiti artists, and please respect the moderators and others who have the job of cleaning the boards ( even the over-enthusiastic ones ).