Quote from: Ratimov on Today at 11:14:28 AM

As I understand it, when theymos created the merit system, he meant that after the merit sources received merit from him, they in turn distributed them to users. And users who received merit from the merit sources also distributed them to other users.

It is a role of merit source but not a mandatory task they have to finish each month. Being a merit source and distribute sMerit to others are kind of free task so that merit sources are free to handle all smerit allocated to their accounts.

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In total, a certain scheme turned out that 8 merites issued for merit sources turned into 15 merites in total, because the merites distributed were always divided by 2 and new smerites were obtained, which continued to spread to users.

8 - 4 - 2 - 1 = 15 merits

You are wrong. Merit sources only received smerit and they are not received a single merit for being merit sources. Your calculation, consequently, is wrong too. 8 smerits if distribute well will result in
8 - 4 - 2 - 1 - 0.5 = 15.5 smeris in total and only 15 smerit can be distributed.

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But some users break this scheme of distribution of merites, leaving them with themselves and without sending them to anyone else.

Last year, theymos restructured merit sources and he said he will recalculate things each 6 months.

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For example, when evaluating posts, if I see that a user has been banned for a long time, I will not send him merit, because that makes no sense.

Sometimes, you don't know that user is perma banned or not if he did not wear an avatar. If he wears an avatar, you can only guess if you don't dig deeply and investigate. Honestly, I don't think there are reasons to do such investigation before sending my smerit to others.
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So now the question itself: Do you pay attention to those users who never send anything to anyone when sending them a merit or you don't care, the main thing is that the post is useful.
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satoshi, Hal, and some others have received many merit and they deserve that. No need to take their (in)activity into account.