It's not just a matter of someone replying to your post. A spammer will gladly quote anyone, to make his post more important. Ultimately, it comes down to an even worse thing because the useless discussion is prolonged. This is certainly not effective communication.

You don't need to have great technical knowledge to earn merit, your posts should be direct and bring something new, and constructive to the discussion or perhaps a quality conclusion. No matter what you're talking about.
A few general sentences on the topic are not even worth reading, and certainly not worthy of merit.