any tips?
The Merit system was designed to reduce spam. You look like a real user who uses this forum as it's intended, so I don't think you deserve to be held back by a lack of Merit.I'll take this slightly out of context again:
undoubtedly some people got screwed by this, and if they have decent posts, by all means, give them the 250 or 500 merit that they need to rank-up.
And Merit you 