I have decided that when I get a smerit, instead of meriting a previous post, I keep surfing the forum and give the merit to the next post I find worthy of merit.
Do you do the same or how do you do it?
Not at all. If I find a few exceptional posts I really want to merit and I can't, I bookmark them.
But most of the time I merit what I find appropriate as long as I have sMerit and afterwards I just not merit.
Of course, since I'm not merit source, I simply cannot be generous with merits and will usually award only 1-2.
If you do spend time to specifically award good posts, it could also be an option to apply for the merit source position, although you're only Full Member and that could be in some eyes an obstacle.