I can only give suggestions, improve the quality of your posts and let the merit come to you by itself.
if you see senior accounts that have a lot of merit, that means their contribution and also their reputation for years in this forum is no longer in doubt.
To find out the rules in this forum, you can look at the topic that was given a PIN in this thread.
do you mean senior member rank accounts or older forum members?. If you mean senior member ranks then I would say it is not entirely correct because some forum members even those who have Legendary member rank got airdropped merits when merit is implemented although there are some forum members who started as a newbie with 0 merits until they reach the legendary member rank because of their contribution to the forum. It may not be easy to get merits but it is not possible. I am once a newbie with 0 merits untill I have what I have right now and I won't forget those who have helped me achieve this because of their guidance.
Speaking about getting a merit on a post, is some how funny although to me I find it funny because you take your time do some research and when you're done with all that, you post it with a smile on your face hoping that it will draw attention "yes" it will but after having like 5plus comments you find out that your post have no merit put scroll down to other comments you see merits on other people's opinion to your post and not yours. That's really painful but what do we do? Let it go, continue the same thing on and on but one day merit will come like a surprise.
It is because people like that only think of earning merits for different reasons like increasing their rank to join bounty campaigns instead of thinking how to contribute in this forum or how to make a good/high quality posts then merits will surely come.