There are so few people out of the thousands of accounts here that have merits. It isn't really fair. The spread is terrible and many peoples posts get buried in other people posts. Very annoying if someone writes a good post and it gets buried is shitty posts. The next thing is that it is mostly people starting topics that get merit. This is because it is the first message you see. Maybe if you try get your post on the first page of a post where people can see it then you will have a better chance.
The worst thing is I am out of merits so how the hell must anyone rankup? There too few merits to rank everyone. There should be enough for everyone to rank.
It is true that most topic starters are frequently merited and DdmrDdmr already explained the reason why topic starters often get merits. That's not all, the forum user who answer someone's question, corrected some mistakes like typos (much more) and teaching someone would also get merited just like what DdmrDdmr did by explaining you about how the merit system works, so you will understand the merit system.
The worst thing is I am out of merits so how the hell must anyone rankup? There too few merits to rank everyone. There should be enough for everyone to rank.
Actually, your merits won't run out even if you will send an smerits to anyone you wanted to reward and there are enough merits for everyone to rank up because theymos (The Forum Admin) is very busy and decide to add merit sources or remove merit sources. There are two types of merits that you'll be able to get, receive or you can earn and it is explained already so this post will be an addition to what DdmrDdmr explained and probably miss something about the merit system.
Two Types of Merits:
1.) Merit = It is one of the "Rank Requirements" that you need to meet before ranking up to the next rank. You can actually keep the merit in your own forum account and you can't send it or gift. When you are getting rewarded with 1 merit from a forum user then there will be a 0.5 sMerit automatically generated after earning the 1 merit that you got. 1 Merit is equal to 0.5 sMerit.
2.) sMerit (Sendable Merit) = You can get this type of merit after receiving 2 Merits from any forum users who will reward you with merits. The sMerit is used to reward any forum user you want to reward if you think that he/she is worthy enough to be rewarded by you. The sMerit can be sent or received by every forum user as long as there are sMerits available to reward. Every sMerit that are being sent will automatically turned into Merits.
Kindly check this link
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sourcesYou can see it for yourself on what is the total of smerit generated per 30 days.
I'll edit this post if there made a mistake about the merit system.