Newbie should be corrected and not to be use to earn merits, most of the top rank members earn most of their merits from attacking and reporting newbie.
While this might sound unreal, it is very true. I have faced such a challenge while I was a lower ranked member. Some of the established members does nothing else than to bash the newbies. When they ask innocent questions, they take advantage of the question to earn merits to themselves and demarket the questionair who is the Op. These things happen, but if you are not sensitive enough, you will not understand. A post that ought to get merits, but due to the first responder was hash and negative towards the Op, no one will drop a single merit for Op. Unless in a rare case that people like DdMrDdMr will.
You nailed it mentioning Mr Ddmr
2 here. There is a shared impression among many members here that politics is taking over the forum, and strategic alliances and personal wars weigh more than creating quality content in order to get merits. Happily, a few honorable exceptions still exist here. They know who they are, and it is up to each newbie to discover who they are, amidst all the noise.