...if we had a feature where we could report such topics or posts to administrator [not mod] to reverse the merits. The goal for merit system is to appreciate good posts, not the empty posts...
I think there was a similar discussion, it was about merit farmers and resellers, where posts were deleted to reduce the possibility of recognition of giving credit for meaningless posts between alt accounts...
This could be good and simple solution to reverse or remove all merits if topic or merited posts was deleted