I don't agree that merit is just a matter of pride for legendaries. The actual count is not important to me, as I will never be able to compete with the stats reporters. However, individual awards are useful, and they give me a feel for the general opinions in the forum, and they help me to "tune" my posts and threads.
Not the merit points are a matter of pride for users (maybe for some... I don't know), the Legendary rank is (this is what I've said)

That's not a problem, it's exactly why the Merit system was introduced. If someone has 300 Activity without earning a single Merit, I'm pretty sure his posts are worthless.
But by all means, if you find a worthy Newbie with good posts:
report them here so I can Merit them!
Will do it for sure, I actually say some good posts (from newbies) who deserved some merit but I didn't had anything at that time left to give it.
Thanks for the tip!