be far more conservative when giving merits to newbies
I'm not going to do that. Merit was introduced to stop spammers, not to discourage Newbies from the few Merits they get. Even if a few spammers manage to get some Merit from me, that shouldn't mean the good real users have to suffer because of them.
I also don't support this suggestion as we can't generalize that all newbies are here for the forum contests/signature campaigns/bounty hunters. While I feel that there is a great percentage that just joins the forum for a quick cash grab (and later realize that it wasn't as simple as they thought), there is also really great users amongst those. The same users that are able to judge if a certain posts is worth meriting, are also the same users that judge that it isn't worth meriting, that is how the ecosystem is balanced. If the user stopped making merit worth posts then this will be reflected on his account long term.