This isn't something that bothers me, but with the little controversy about votes vs merits in the pizza voting, I thought: what if it were possible for the OP to activate/deactivate the possibility of giving merits in his topic?

Just as you can choose to make a thread auto-moderated or not, you could choose whether the thread is eligible to circulate merits or not. Of course, by choosing that it is not possible to circulate merit, the OP itself cannot receive merit in that topic. This could help minimize the impact of merits, which some believe exist, on topics like pizza voting or members of the year.

I don't know to what extent, on a technical level, this would be minimally viable to implement, but the idea remains in the air.