Actually what I notice is the probability to be merited increase with how famous you are in the first place then how substantial your post is. For example if theymos makes a post about a new forum feature, he may receive for it a total of +50 merit, while if any other staff member announced it, he may receive less than 30. Same applies for other members. No?
Congratulations, you have just discovered the "Matthew effect". But just like almost other people, you also commited it. My post was just 2 posts below
libert19's post mentioning the effect. You missed it because I'm just Jr. member ranked, right?
The "rich gets richer and poor stays poorer" is called "Matthew effect" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect). Applying this theory to Bitcointalk, it can be interpreted that if a problem or an idea spotted at the same time by a low ranked and a high ranked members, the high ranked member is recognized and the low ranked is easier to be overlooked.