The first sign to show that you are really interested in learning about the question you ask is how serious you are following up on every single answer that has been given, which many newbies are not good at doing.
Just check within yourself and fine areas that you pick interest in and how you can contribute to the community, and you might not want to worry about merit as they will just come to know even when you don’t expect them.
Very true. Some newbies would just create topics and forget about it, with expectations of earning merits and how the thread is going is really not their business anymore, even if there was really a lot to learn from the contributions of other experienced users in the forum in the particular subject, they’ll simply just miss it.
Your advice is also very good, one more thing I can add is for the OP to first dedicate himself to learning more about the forum and just like you said, he’ll be able to know areas he can effectively contribute to the forum that will be beneficial to other members, and the merits will start coming in.