Everyone has their own way of sharing merits, but I have never been a supporter of such initiatives, but more of that natural approach when you see a good post through browsing the forum and then reward it. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, some good posts really stay buried under sometimes large amount of spam, I personally came across such users, and I was really surprised that they don't have a single merit. Personally, I would not differentiate between opening a new topic and responding to a post in an existing one - if the post is good, it doesn't matter in which context it is created.

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This is a bad approach that will not (in most cases) result in someone rewarding you with a merit. It is not up to you to publicly state that you deserve something, but that decision should come exclusively from other users who recognize whether some post is good or bad. Try to be natural, original and don't bother too much with whether you get merit or not for each of your posts.