I don't know which day it happened but
yesterday (I did check the
merit source stat page recent days), the forum has only
90 merit sources in total (from the previous figure at 130). 40 merit sources were removed. The last time we saw such very low total merit sources is at 11/7/2018 with 83 merit sources in total. Simultaneously, the total sMerits allocated to merit sources decreased to 18821
Wooow that was some huge number of removed merit sources. I think their inactivity explains why there was a very low supply of Merits in the past few months.
It also beats my understanding why someone who go through the trouble of applying to be a merit source, yet they very well know that they are not going to be active in the forum. It would be understandable if it was a handful of chaps but 40 inactive merit sources is a huge number.
Hopeful the double allocations to active merit sources will try to solve the problem