I think there are enough post in this forum on different boards where any low rank user can submit their post and earn merits. Distinguishing whether a post qualifies for merit or not completely depends on the OP.
You need to decide by yourself whether that post qualifies for a merit or not as every individual here has different criteria for awarding merits.
Honestly every post is worth to be merited as long as the given reply or post gives the people who will read it knowledge about a certain topic and yes we have different criteria for awarding merits to people in the forum but the main thing you need to target is the one I said in the first sentence because that's what the forum is all about but of course giving merits is hard for you can't just freely give it because your merit might decrease because of giving without thinking or understanding the topic and the reply first so I think we all need to research and give good answers to a topic and also add some reference where they can read more about a certain topic because that's add up to the goodness of our post.