Account farming is a hard thing to tackle imo and was the original reason for the merit system.

Familiarity and appreciation could also bread positive feedback to a user. For example: user A gets merited by user B so user A naturally obtains a more positive affinity to user B and enjoys their content more. This may be an unintended consequence of the merit system (but it might also serve to increase engagement and quality discussion).

There's going to be a fuzzy, hard to detect line between the above and account farming, especially on local boards or smaller communities - which are generally good to keep active to show new users from those countries that (1) they're welcome in the crypto community and (2) they have a way to get a fast, public response from people.