Wtf... I came in second. I'm not proud of that. I get support from merit sources. Maybe it's just luck
What's wrong with that? You make it sound like both things are bad: being on top of the merit table for low-rank members and receiving merits from merit sources. Merit sources are instrumental to users ranking up, simply because they have many more merits to pass along than regular members. For a regular member to send 1 merit, they need to receive 2 from other people. Merit sources have bags with hundreds of merits they can distribute.
On the other hand - many newbies feel proud when they earned 1 merit after make a constructive post, whereas OP is not proud to have earned 40+ merit since signing up. My mind wanders and it's like imagining that a Legendary member or an experienced member is joking here. But wait - this is just my guess.
Post quality is not judged by how high your account ranks, people will judge by what you write, not by who wrote it.
Yes - I have to agree on that.
Post quality is assessed subjectively, you can't demand to give a good rating for your post. Account rank does not guarantee posting quality, some forum members who rank Legendary do not necessarily have extensive knowledge in the forum, maybe they are in the highest ranking because they get Airdrop merit from the Admin. You can use the "Report to moderator" button if you come across a low quality post or one that talks gibberish that leads to spam.
That's right - the quality of posts is highly subjective based on the tastes of each user. You may have missed a lot of high quality posts you don't understand like technical discussions about bitcoin - while other users find them very useful. This depends on your taste, so it will definitely not be the same from one user to another.