I find this post irrelevant as anyone who takes the forum seriously would not find it hard to navigate around the forum and for a thread full of applications by other members it is always in the first page of the beginners and Help board so any newbie who is finding it difficult to locate is probably here for a different reason and not interested in ranking up or probably not finding it difficult to rank up.
I never expect you to go by this, and you think you're helping the newbies by directing them to where they can just apply for free merits and that's all?
Apply in the link doesn’t guarantee them receiving merit, @hugeblack doesn’t just give out merits without reviewing the posts so any post not up to standards are not merited. Newbies applying must put in efforts in their posting else they won’t be merited.