It is true, one of my very few posts was in a (s)Merit giveaway topic. Still, if you look to my recent ones (and in the future ones) you won't see me interacting in the same manner. Why? Because I've been following the concept that one should focus more on actually contributing positively to the forum (either by posting, making useful threads, or threads that promote organic activity). The merit that could come from those contribution is a benefit, not an end goal. Not anymore. I reckon that I'm a different person now.

I really don't think that's a fair comparison. If you look to my thread I didn't included threads that just work on the basis of "It's my birthday, post for merit!", "I've got spare sMertis, come post and get some!", "Going to leave Bitcointalk, want to get rid of sMerits".

By contrast, each thread there OP manages to actually care about the organic growth of the forum and asks users to make something rather useful/positive either for the community or for the OP themself (learning to sign messages, learning Logic Gates and what not. Each of this actions contribute in a certain way to good posting, why it would be a bad thing?