Although you have a point Merit always seems easy to get in the Wall Observer topic, I don't think that topic harms the forum. Merit was introduced to stop spammers, and I see no harm in a bunch of guys posting in one very big topic.
There are a lot of Merit sources active in that topic, just like in Meta, which makes it easier to earn Merit. I would love to see technical topics earn more Merit than WO or Meta posts, but I think less people read those, or the people who do read them have less sMerit to share.
Well i think you get the point, lets now look at the merit flow for one of the WBO regulars..
You forgot to compare this data to their actual posts: if 95% of their posts and reading happens in the WO-thread, it's not surprising their Merit activity happens in the same thread too.
I wish the WO-topic had a summary, because there are interesting posts, but there's just far too many other posts to read too.
For anyone who likes scrolling, I made
WallObserver.tk 