The topic did not belong in meta and it has correctly being moved, but it didn't belong to meta for any of the reasons you said, merit sources can't be exploited, merit sources are refilled with smerits so they can give them to members of the forum to rank up, they have no other use of the smerits but to give them out so members can rank up, if they do not give them out, it is wasted after thirty days. Merit sources won't also send merits to a member or their posts without reading it, or checking the history to find out if it is in line with their criteria.
It is their contributions that merit sources and other members will be sending merits to so they will rank up, this is not the first, and will not be the last of such topics i have seen that aims to bring members close to their next rank together, to make it easy for members that want to rank them up do so. You can probably say we do not need another one of them, but that is up to the OP.