This is a forum, higher members that are active do come to post on this forum daily or almost daily to learn from each other. They make posts in a way they read unique posts that they get ideas from to later make better posts too. When I met two friends some years ago, I noticed if I am arguing with one about something, the other friend is almost all the time in support of the other friend. Before I met them, they have been together for years, they have discussed many things they have agreed upon many times before I met them both. That is how this forum is. But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.
Yeap, it happens that I can go to the forum several times a day, read topics, find answers that interest me, but at the same time I have nothing to write, because I found a question that interests me and I also found an exhaustive answer to it. At the moment, I understand that I'm just learning and my knowledge is very often not enough to answer how old ranked members do it.
I think that you would be surprised by the potential greater level of your ability to contribute and even to have various different opinions, if you were to write out your answer/response before reading the responses from other members, and you will start to notice that if you write out your response(s) prior to reading the responses of other members, the way that you answer the questions/issues might not be exactly the same as the more senior member.
Of course, it is up to you regarding how much you want to participate or interact, and it seems to me that there can be additional value with interacting that contributes towards a more active form of learning.. even though it takes more time to interact.. and in the interacting direction, I would suggest that it might be a good practice to write out your answer before reading the responses from other member, so that when you read the responses from other members, you would thereafter be able to see how much your way of expressing yourself is exactly the same or the extent to which your perspective is different.. which may also add some value, too...
You may well be surprised the extent to which your opinion still might be different from the more senior members, even though you have some overlapping areas of agreement with them, so when you read those further responses of the more senior members (and sometimes not so much more senior.. just peers), you can also decide whether to additionally respond to their points but not necessarily remove the areas of your already composed post in which you agree with them.
Therefore, it is clear to me why old ranked members write more posts and get more merit for their posts. They share their knowledge with the society, they are useful for the forum and it is clear that the society thanks them for it. I see how many active forum users get a lot of merit, it inspires me, because I understand that it is possible, but I also see what kind of knowledge you need to have for this, and this is not an easy job and this is a well-deserved result.
There is not any better way to do it, so the question remains up to you in regards to how much you want to use the forum as a way to interact with other members and to learn through such interaction or as a way to passively read posts... the choice is yours, for sure... but I would imagine that you will learn more by interacting even though it is more time consuming, yet a side benefit is that you will likely earn more merits.. even when you are making almost the same points or even if you end up writing out your response and you thought that you agreed, but by the time you write out your response, you realize that you disagree on some of the points that had already been made in the thread.