This post of mine deserves at least one merit. Because I have tried to explain in the replay of this post how people can be in danger of using the same password everywhere without knowing it. I advise everyone not to use the same password everywhere. I have also tried to explain what kind of danger it can be. Lastly I also said that high knowledge helps people in many ways, and low knowledge puts people in danger.
So this post of mine deserves at least one merit.
Your post fails to explain how password reuse hurts users, you only make a general statement that "it helps scammers". And your advice of using uppercase letters and numbers is just misleading, those things don't improve security by as much as you'd think.
1. Why do they have to explain to you that their post deserve merit, can't you please judge them objectively for their post which is totally deserved ?
Making an explanation would encourage them to choose their posts more carefully, and it's also a chance to earn additional merit for the explanation itself, if they can demonstrate that they understand what makes a post valuable.
2. When a newbie participate in this thread and they ask you to give them some merit on a post they think is quality then the request can be considered begging for merit. Beg for merit might be the reason someone has get a negative trust and their profile is also being ignored by the user.
It's only begging if it's unsolicited. Merit giveaways/contests/etc. is a normal practice on this forum.
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.
Newbies seem to interpret "making helptful posts" as "creating guide topics", and I want to show them that you can earn merit by just participating in discussions.