In fact, it all started when I started a topic for newbie members without merit in the Beginners & Help section of the forum, and offered them to report their quality posts and get the first merit.
Unfortunately, most of the reported posts were of poor quality and I could not give them merit.
After that I started getting unwanted private messages in my inbox from newbie members begging me to give them merits.
Then I just gave up and closed the topic.
Everything had simply gone too far.
I think that's why theymos didn't publicly introduce merit sources even though many of us now know who is on the 111 sources list. Few merit source and most people feel uncomfortable receiving pm from users especially if they ask for merit, it is considered begging which is very unwelcome. But I'm sure there are some merit sources willing to help in different ways regardless of whether it's by making a request or reporting some post links in the threads they provide (Ratimov and LoyceV do this). These are all attitudes that are expected to help users gain merit and rankings and as far as the merit system goes, we've seen a lot of users get their help in a decent way.