Merits cannot be fully considered as the certain way to ensure quality posts. If this were the case, then there would be unified objective criteria for evaluating qualified posts. And each time these criteria are met, the post receives a predetermined number of merits. But in reality everything is absolutely different. Merits are often given not for a quality post, but for agreeing with the author. Therefore, merit turns into something similar to like. In addition, users give a completely different amount of merits depending on their capabilities (number of sMerits), as well as depending on how generous they are in general. And there are far fewer generous people than stingy ones. Also, merits are more often given to those users who already have a large number of merits. The less you have, the more suspicious and distrustful they treat you, and as a result, they give you less merits.

I will not deny that the merit system has had a beneficial effect on the forum situation. There are significantly fewer freeloaders who want to get easy money for spam. But the system is far from perfect, and it cannot be stated that there is a direct indestructible correlation between high-quality posts and merits.