You were right in there. Merits are not given to all great posts in the forum, so you can’t tell that those who have not been merited are completely making pointless discussion. Everyone has their own idea or concept on the given thread so I think there’s no right or wrong here. It’s just that some posts were favored by other members so they leave merits for them while some posts may still be good and reasonable but have not gained attention by most of the members.
It doesn't make sense if someone regularly make high quality posts and they not receive any merit, merit sources are everywhere in this forum, other people could just merit them or report it to this thread
[self-moderated] Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source.
But it's obviously ranking isn't the only one thing to judge someone post quality, a new newbie rank and low number of posts might be a good poster, but if there's a newbie rank with high number of posts e.g. 1000+ and he only receive 10 merits. It's obviously a spammer or shitposter.