My point is that the community leans towards thinking that it is OK not to send merits to someone based on a generally low-quality posting history, even if the occasional post of that person is good.
I only do that in extreme cases, but the extreme cases are often the majority.
Quite often the ratio of coherent posts to referral shit is 100 to 1 or more. In that case that's enough to not make me want them to progress. It's clear they're here for a reason that'll turn out to degrade the forum.