Yes it’s not the highest but still they are one of the highest merit count than most of the participants
It proves me right, Check those accepted members merit history. Does the thread where the merit acquired looks familiar to you in relation to this topic?

Extra: those that applying typically just the merit jerker buddies. They just recycling merit through themselves on merit thread. Notice that these guys rarely send merit out of their circle.
I’m too tired to fight this merit jerker. Merit system is now use to carve an easy path for a guaranteed signature campaign spot for farmer since normal user that using forum having a hard time to
get merit without merit buddy unless they are initially good on Bitcoin technical discussion while this jerker just post hype bitcoin post and received tons of merit.
Look at the quantity of merits that this thread got:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5542027.msg65358445#msg65358445. It is much less than D5000 posts often get. It is not even a substantial thread.

In the end, what I see is not a problem with the merits, but rather with the benefits that some users with low-quality posts have in campaigns here on the forum. Perhaps what we should be discussing is how managers analyze their user choices and retain those users in campaigns.
Sure, I don't mind that approach either. I can already foresee some people giving excuses how managers can do whatever they want and whatnot. A fairly sized block of DefaultTrust members could solve this situation in a few days. However, it seems primarily to me that it preserves the status quo and does not make any changes in policy. The lies that we tell ourselves about allegedly decentralized systems are just sad, it is very similar to the altcoin space.