What became of "helping newbies grow"? The truth is that not all Legendary members began writing quality posts when they were newbies. It's a learning process, and the longer you stay here, the better poster you become. I know the justification has been that newbies are shit and legendary members are great posters. C'mon lower some standard while meriting newbies.
OP, I don't have any specific standards on how I should spend merit on posts that I deem worthy. I don't spend it only on Legendary or high rank users, but newbie and low rank users also deserve it especially if their posts are quality. I'm not going to ignore newbie but I honestly don't have a particular habit of digging more newbie across the various board.
As a user who has experienced what it's like to be a novice after the merit system was introduced, I also feel that users have to lower quality standards to submit merits. But actually it depends on who does it regardless of the rank of the recipient. The bottom line is post quality, but actually you might have a hard time finding newbie who really deserve help as most of them are not newbie but alt from high ranking members
[they are merit conscious from the start] and that's the problem.