First, I will start by saying that many people (both source merit and non source) on the forum is biased in terms of awarding merits, not on this local board but generally.

Since I joined the forum and got to know about the merit system, I have observed that many (source and non source) people are sentimental, biased and political in terms of awarding merits.  I had a long list of unworthy post that got packs of merits, ranging from general boards to local board and my purpose of gradually making up that list was to create a thread to show how biased a lot of members (that you would say they are reputable) on the forum distribute merit to post that doesn't really give any help to anyone. What happened was that i don't know how the kids (my aunts kids us my phone to play games) around me uninstalled my note book app where I was dropping the links of those post and it disrupted my plan of raising that thread. 

The weird thing that motivated me to want to raise that topic on the general board was after I saw a thread where a member ask a question, stating, "who knows what tomorrow would be? " Someone dropped a comment and said "tomorrow would be [mention any days of the week] and he got merited. But that's in the past now since I can not find all of those thread and post again to still create the thread.

If I remember correctly, some thread with the kind of idea regarding how biased merit distribution is done has been raised before on the meta board, I just can not find the thread again, but if you are good in searching through the forum, you will find it. So, here you are making same observation on our local board and trying to encourage the merit distribution to be more faire instead of biased.

 In the early time while I was very active on the board, I have awarded merit to post that I find helpful or to members that had quality in their post but are low rank and deserve to grow too and I have received merit on some of thepost I made here which I believe anyone that merited the post found it helpful too (now, I don't have so much smerit to share here and I don't actively read here as before).

On this board, as on the general board too, there will always be sentiment in sending merits because some of people here on the forum not just this local board, have a close or long distance relationship and they know each others one on one, so they can decide to send merit to their friend due to familiarity or friendship sake, don't get it wrong, cuz I know you might want to say or ask if you should also/only send your merit to your friends or gang.

The question is, if i know Mr. "A" One on one and I don't know Mr. "B" Physically, but this two people make quality post but because 'A' is my friend, I usually look out for any of his quality & helpful post and I give merit to it, do you think it's bad to give merit to his post if those post are really quality and worth the merit? (Note that am not a merit source).

You made mention of our local board having about 5 merit source, I know that brainboss have been the only merit source on this board and you know that it's not every quality post he can see to merit, owning to the fact that he might have a life outside this forum too, he could miss to read some pages, yeah. To call a spade a spade, one merit source can not see everything. I don't know if before now there were more than 1 merit source apart from brainboss but even while he was just the only source merit in the Nigeria board, he tried to distribute his smerit fairly, I have tracked his merit history many times.

 I think Igebots is also a merit source and I think I have come across a thread he created for people that are close to their next rank to apply their and he will give them the complete merit to rank up, maybe that's how he choose to distribute his merit and few times I still see some thread he merit too.

About the rest of the 4 merit source, I don't know how long they started to be a source but I know that there were few members of the Nigerian board, including you that were just approved by forum admin recently (just last month) as a source merit, and I guess that the allocation they gave to you guys is not enough to reach all the quality post on the local board, since some of you are too generous to award 5, 10, or 15 merit at once, so I guess the Smerits was exhausted too quickly without reaching every good post.

And, some of this merit source might be a member of this local board but were not made merit source of the Nigeria local board. Why did I say so...? I remember I read your comment somewhere and you said that you were not made a source of this Local board and so you can choose to share your Smerit to any board. How about others, are they really source of this board too?

If really they are, and you too, you guys can talk to each other via DM and agree on how to work things out to make the board move forward in terms of the merit distribution and other things that can benefit the house. I already saw some threads and comments that you gave meirted on this board, keep up the work and don't think you are not noticed by anyone who is observing by didn't say it.

If this other merit source who were approved last month have already spent their allocations for last month, today is a fresh month (July) and there will be allocations, so hopefully those posts you are talking about will be merited (just saying tho).

If I'm to defend the merit sources, maybe they are lazy or have other activities that has stopped them from reading all the threads and find those quality post to merit. You said and I quote, " I've been surfing around just to keep an eye on some deserving posts when my source gets refilled and I can see really good posts abandoned" Maybe other source merit don't have too much time to surf the forum in search of good post.

Another thing is that, every merit source are different individuals and they have different sense of reasoning. Merit source 'X' might see a post and condemn the quality or assume that the post is not helpful to anyone but another merit source 'z' could end up meriting the post because he found it quality based on his own criteria of rating good post.

When I joined the forum new, there was a merit source who normally asked members to send him a PM of the boards that they normally make comments on, I didn't benefit from that source merit but many people did. They will send him pm and he will review their post on those boads and send merit to them, but I think he stop due to the high level of farmed account as they claimed. The point am trying to make here is that, there are methods in which source can use to award merit to quality post on this board.

The merit system being biased is not just a local board problem, farm accounts is not just a local board problem, but I would still like to discourage our people here towards doing such and let the right thing be done. Merit should not only be given based sentiment.

Happy new month...