It can be a bummer to follow a newbie that posts well and then they get caught for cheating earning a ban.
You are pretty old and experienced in the forum. No doubt you have experience on how different newbies behave and I have no doubt that in your capacity, you have many newbies rank up.
But on the issue of being skeptical of handing merits to newbies who might eventually get banned. I don't think it should very disappointing in as much as you merited the right and quality posts. Beside, we vote some politicians into power and in the end they don't perform, that should make us not to vote subsequently, rather we will be careful of who to vote.
C'mon lower some standard while meriting newbies.
Oh, hell no. There's no way I'm going to lower my standards, because if every merit source did that and just started handing out merits for mediocre or even shitposts, the merit system wouldn't function as it should. It's not supposed to be easy to earn merits. Never was, and that's the way it should be. By making members work harder to rank up, forum post quality has gone up significantly (IMO) since 2018, and account farming has been decimated.
Your standards are not so high or unattainable for a genuine newbie who wishes to grow. You have handed good amounts of merits to me, especially when I was in lower ranks. So, I can boldly attest to that.
My concern is knowing that you have B&H board on ignore. It doesn't only deprive the newbies merits, it also denies them some advice from an established user like you. Though other persons are there helping, who knows you could make the needed difference.
It's your personal decision and if it's cool with you, no problems. But visiting the B&H and maybe other boards you ignored occasionally (probably on your birthday) would be a good one.