For me
Merit are give it in some people to share information about of your topics you like. Because their are many people do not know of all information,rules and regulation about this bitcoin forum ,like newbie members most of all newbie are not familiar in their rules of bitcoin forum and didn't know to get merit.
I don't know if this thread belongs here because i have seen like this in the meta section of this forum. Merit is given is someone here likes your post, that post of yours should be informative, useful and unique. But then i can say that it only depends on the discretion of the merit source when or who to give his smerit.