There are a lot of merits, but they are less active. Now, many big accounts are around, but we newbies need help identifying which one is actually what kind of account.
Is there an organized list of reputable members in this forum? By looking at their list, newbies will understand who is in a good position and doing good things in this forum. If there is a post like this, please show it and help.
Since everything else has already been covered by other members above, I'll only add one thing. You need to remember that merits in general aren't a metric for reputation. What I mean to say is that a person having a lot of merits might have a bad reputation, and it's not necessary for a person having a lot of merits to be reputable. The trust page can be a better way to check the reputation of a user, however, as said by yahoo, you should also not trust a feedback blindly, even if it's from a DT member, always do your research, check and read all the references provided and then reach a conclusion.