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> My question is, what message is this thread conveying that is useful to the community? Merits in my understanding are to encourage the account which is giving useful information to the users here. The thread does not even contain the struggle he did to upgrade his account, so that some newbie can be inspired.
I can speak as to my gracious and overwhelming generosity when I merited the referenced post with
1 sMerit
Yes, the post is scarce in detail on the struggle (barely any) to rank-up to Jr. Member, but being xMas (at the time), what it does convey is a kind of kids illusion when achieving something, along side a dash of positivity which is not always encountered here, and less of all on the lower ranks. That, as a message, seems beneficial in terms of attitude, and thus I personally deemed it meritable.
Note: I am rather mean with sMerits myself, but Ive been giving this fact a thought lately. If I were to run short of time, Id have to open my sMeriting options to either award less sMerits per month (on aggregate), or award the same largish amount per month, but to way less posts (thus more merits per post). I have never awarded more than 4 sMerits in one go, but if I do encounter time restrictions, Id have to opt for one of these two options.