True one meaningful post is better than 20 low-quality posts. Since you know this hypothesis why do you have 384 posts and only 30 merits? This means you have failed to make a quality post in the forum. Only 30% of your posts have good qualities and the rest are not eligible to be merit. Perhaps you just know about this now and that is why you want to share it with the public Good one. Once you make a massive contribution to the forum, once can still be a newbie but have the quality and requirement of a legendary member.
Note: The essence of ranking up is not for signature campaigns as any newbies who have that in mind will never rank up in the forum.
I have the same thought as you; quality posters do earn merits by all means because their posts always contain informative or educative content that will guide or help others in the forum, and we have seen many quality posters that have earned merits above expectations and they don't even care about their ranks because maybe they are here to either learn or share some information to the public and the merits they receive serve as their reward for the good deed and their effort.
Although, merits are scarce these days in the forum, but yet, quality posts are still merited by merit sources.
Some people do join the forum because of the signature campaign, you can't blame them because most of them are looking for ways to earn a living depending on their respective economic situation, and lack of work. The main aim is to share the right information and contribute to the forum positively.