For example, I don't see members getting merit on the altcoin discussion board, it's rare.
The problem is the posts in Altcoin Discussion are so atrociously bad that merit sources (for the most part) don't go there anymore. So there may indeed be a few informative, substantive posts being added to that section every day, but they are sandwiched between heaving loaves of shitposts, in shit topics about nothing, so nobody will ever seen them.
I've visited that section pretty recently and in fact have started up
one thread this year and at least
one last year. I was genuinely looking for community input, but what do I get instead? 97% nonsense--if I got any replies at all--which was enough for me to give up completely on every single one of the altcoin sections.
Unless you create a thread with a title that asks a simple question (like ETH vs. gold or some such BS) that bounty shitposters can have a canned answer for, forget it. Any good posts with thought put into them get drowned in the ocean of zero-thought, zero-value crap. And it's been that way for years.