I do feel like merit is a popularity contest. It's totally worthless for Legendary members, just bragging rights yet you see Legendary members getting merited for everything.
It depends. If you are an active campaign participant, the merits are important even for legendary accounts. We have seen many campaigns where the earned merits in the last 120 days are taken into account. Nowadays, we are seeing campaigns where there is a merit-rank, enabling those with 3k or 4k of earned merits better pay rates than the rest of the participants. If you earn 2k and start thinking, now I don't care anymore and can relax, your position may be filled by someone who didn't relax. So, they have their uses. Let's call it that.
I suppose you have a point. I have been getting custom sig deals for years now that usually have no merit requirement, so I don't really pay attention to merits. I have used a must earn 1 merit per week rule in a couple campaigns and wasn't really a fan of it. Should merit earning be taken into consideration? Maybe, but post history and quality is much more important to look at. Some deserve merits and don't get them which makes the system unfair. Wouldn't like to see a great forum contributor over
looked because he didn't earn x amount of merits.