In a month or 2, you will know who is a new MS and who is no more MS. Patience.
I'm not in Theymos head, but I understand this latest change as "
You want sMerits ? Here are some sMerits!! Now stop bothering me with it for at least 2 years"

Hah... I never thought about it like that but it makes a lot of sense.
I was like WTF am I supposed to do with this.
But then I answered my own question and opened back up my
Merit Scholarship thread.
I gotta tell you though, our founder, Mr. Lebowski, is considerably hard to please these days.
In any case, thanks theymos
And I noticed a quirk, I keep getting this message:
An Error Has Occurred!
You can only send 50 merit to a given user per 30 days. You have already sent 50 merit to that user.
even though its been more than 30 days for some users... hmm.