Personally, it is not a duty or a job!
Merit sources are doing free meriting jobs but they have to spend their time to do it. So there is no pressure from theymos I think. A merit source is granted if theymos considers that member is a quality member and has ability to clarify bad and good posts, trusted enough to not sell sourced merits to get money etc.
Tranthindung i know all of that, merit sources are doing a free job, i know they are not paid or anything, and i never called it a job in the sense you have taken it, maybe you took that part out of context, if you look closely, i put that part in single quotes. My idea is that as a merit source you have a personal duty to keep merits flowing in the forum, that is why the forum generates free merits for you every thirty days to give it out to members. If a merit source isn't active, then they may not have the time that you are talking about, but they do not have to spend their time to do anything if they are active, they send merits in the thread they participate in.
This is the most stupid thing that Merit Source or any other participant can do, not give out Merit simply because someone else does not give it out either. The merit system is not barter on the basis of you to me, I to you.
I did not say the merit system is similar to a barter trade, but we would want to encourage more people to be involved in the flow, there is no need to hoard it, so i would prefer to send merits to members that are involved in the system, not members that hoard their smerits that is of no use to them, i have also seen merit sources say the same thing.
If every member hoarded merits and expect to receive from others, then who is going to rank up, everyone will be stuck somewhere, users would not celebrate their milestone merit achievements, members will not get to 10k merits, etc.