Been away for some time, looking to get back into this whole story, have some merit and want to help out those who need a merit or two to rank up. Are threads like those allowed today?
It's not against the rules, but if you only have a few sMerit to give, you can do that without creating a topic. If you read a good post: Merit it!
Once in a while I go "full Merit source" on someone who's close to the next rank (by going through their post history and targeting just that user with Merit), but that's mainly because theymos overloaded me with sMerit.
Strictly speaking, you can't sell or trade your merits, according to the rules.
Strictly speaking, only Merit sources are not allowed to sell Merit:
It is not allowed for merit sources to sell their merit.
Of course, that doesn't mean the community thinks it's okay to sell Merit. It's a bit like account sales: officially it's allowed, but heavily frowned upon.