I am bumping this thread just to say that, curiously, I seem to be earning more merits lately. I don't know if it's a streak or what. In the 8 days so far in May, I've earned about 30 merits, that's 15% of the total I've earned in 9 months. I hope this will take hold as I gain more knowledge and become a better poster, so that I won't notice so much that lack of smerits to send.
Good for you and you deserved it mate, I sometimes saw your post and I say, not bad. Keep it up and keep it motivated through your informative posts and someday you will never know and said, "oh I'm now Sr. member rank". 
I tend to agree if you will apply as a merit source, it seems you're very active in the gambling section and that section doesn't have enough merit sources to visit and it might distribute some good posters there.
Theymos has not adjusted the source merit allocations in a long time, and has not appeared to have adjusted merit sources in a long time, even as merit sources have become inactive.
That is why I feel like he may reallocate the merit distribution since there is no changes were made in that area for a very long time and also as you said some merit sources that becomes inactive needs to be filled with new merit sources or reallocations or certain boards and sections will ran out of merits for sure no matter how good those posts are.I don't know what is the process of sending smerit per merit sources but it seems sending 20+ smerit in one post isn't looking good, it might reasonable if that 4-5 smerit in one post, my question is, are they tired of distributing on it?