And I don't think I'll get above #6 unless some merit sources above me drop out. I'm not even sure I can maintain #6 on a monthly basis, as it's not easy to distribute that many merits consistently. I'm glad some members have taken me up on my offer of monthly post history reviews and that the "Ranking up" thread exists in Meta. If I had to rely on finding good posts all by myself, I don't think I could give out 600-800 merits monthly.
This problem is solved by expanding your merit distribution area (if you have time, of course). If I distributed merit within my locale, as it was before, then I could hardly distribute even 700 merit, not to mention 1200. Therefore, I began to expand my allocation to different locales and sections of the forum. But you need to devote a lot of time to this, this is a fact. I recently discovered that in a Turkish locale (the largest locale after Russian), merit sources only give out 700 merit a month. Of course, posts in Turkish can become a serious obstacle to understanding, but in principle, using auxiliary tools, it will be possible to understand what it is about and support active users of merit.