I do not understand it, because I think Meta is for forum-related issues. This one relates to forum issues, in my opinion.
This forum aims to be as free as possible. It's up to the campaign manager who they want to pay.
I was surprised by your quoting style: it's much more common to reply under the quote, not above it.What LoyceV did is great, but I still think LoyceV has too high requirements. 35 merits for Member rank, which made me sad months ago.
It was an experiment. Members had many months to earn that much Merit.
Without Merit, I wouldn't have accepted Members at all, as it's too much work to go through 98% bad applications to find a few Members with decent posts. With Merit, posts still need manual review, but it's a great tool to use for a first selection.