As a newbie, I read many posts that has quality. After reading the posts I'll feel like to merit the post, but as a newbie, I might not have a sendable merit, I will have no option than to slide on.
Assuming there is an alternative to merit just like "Facebook like" along side merit, it would favour me.
Atleast if I don't have merit to give, I will just click like and move on pending when I'll have merit to award the user.
This proposed "like" might likely not be used by admins, or neither shall it determine ranking, but it should just be a mere appreciation for a quality post when merit is lacking.
As an alternative, I would propose that all users be given a regular amount of smerit like we are all merit sources. The amount you get could be based off of some metric like account level, signup date, post count, or some formula, etc. That would seemingly make things as decentralized as possible, although the alt account issue ever looms.