See, that’s what we know happens to some extent on the forum, and the objective here was to get a small idea of the extent or proportion, knowing full well that the poll numbers were likely not going to be representative.

The confusion is initially perhaps caused by the terminology we use ("+Merit" button, I’ve merited you, and so on), and although it is explained in the "Merit a post screen" (when you press the +Merit button), profiles such as those with few merits, or those recently woken-up, may not get to that screen. They may therefore believe, as I did at the beginning (until I became wiser), that the Merit counter is a unique input/output bag (it’s only an input bag).