People have different reasons for being here in the Bitcointalk forum, and that is why some new ranks members are after merits to rank up their accounts and get them fixed in signature campaigns, and really some members are here just to learn about Bitcoin and general cryptocurrency and how to provide proper security to their funds. If someone is a total newbie that doesn't have any knowledge about Bitcoin and it changes after merits at an early level, it may be a distraction for them to be learning properly because they never focus on things they are supposed to learn at the beginning of the cryptocurrency journey but only look for merits. But if newbies can give themselves a good time to learn first, they will find it easy to rank up because they will always be in good discussions in the forum, and they will not always be after creating threads that have been created before.
The truth is most of the newbies joining this forum recently are not typical newbies but a bunch of already ranked up members disguising as newbies in order to rank up and enroll in signature campaigns as many as possible while, the typical newbies are not after the knowledge they're supposed to acquire in this forum. This is very obvious when you see new accounts or member ranks are so focused on merits other than making meaningful and helpful contributions in the forum.
Most of us join the forum without even knowing anything about the merit but that is not longer the story of the day. It's not a bad idea to know about the forum or merits system as a newbie but it's also important to be aware of how you are to acquire those merits the same way you know it exists. Sharing your post to be merited is not entirely bad but as a newbie but that should not be their priority because it'll be a distraction.