It seriously depends on the sub boards in your local board, if your local board do not have specific sub board for this merit discussion and the main board was strictly for bitcoin related discussions then merit discussions are off topic there. For example the main board has a sub board for meta where forum related discussions are held and merit is one of them and the reason why you see them been entertained here, if there wasn’t this meta board and you posted the merit discussion on another board I think it will be moved too.

My suggestions is if your local board discusses a lots of forum improvements discussions then it is best to have your own local board meta sub board to differentiate it with off topic discussions