Exactly. Those who have to be aware of which posts should receive merits are the merits giver. He is the one who must assess the situation and understand what kind of user he is dealing with.
It would be completely unfair to block an area of the forum from merits, harming users who make a clear effort to write good content for the community.
I already commented on this in another topic, but even in the "Gambling discussion" area, there are topics that deserve merit. Despite noting that few merits are distributed in this area. This is a good example that the solution does not involve depriving an area of the forum of merits.
When there is a lot of spam in an area of the forum, what we should do is report it and ask the moderators to delete it. It shouldn't be asking to end merits.
I think that is the point mentioned by nutildah. The criteria should not be merit givers giving merits for any reason other than the receiver deserving it. The definition of what posts
deserve merits should not even be discussed because it will vary immensely from member to member. There is simply far too much reasoning and rationale (as well as politics, cliques, revenge, grudges etc) involved per individual member thought processes to ever find anything close to consensus therefore it should not be discussed here.
Keeping that aside, disabling merits in one thread could start an avalanche of requests for other threads but there is a problem and it has not been tackled. I am glad the OP started the thread to invite discussion.
When there is a lot of spam in an area of the forum, what we should do is report it and ask the moderators to delete it. It shouldn't be asking to end merits.
aside from infofronts light touch, WO is a more or less a moderator free zone per theymos
There we have the answer to reporting low-quality posts and spamming in the Wall Observer thread. Moderators are not going to take action therefore what could be a solution that is acceptable to those concerned about the level of spamming and merit begging without those that are giving the merits feeling they are being censored?