I also want to know about Merit earning.Becasue I will try to be a Jr member in this forum at first and to learn about crypto deeply.
Don't focus to rank up maybe try to learn first crypto deeply since once you read those information you need to grow up then for sure you can contribute well to the discussions happened here and can help people to their needs especially with newbie same like you.
Also try to find the threads created by many people here since there are so many answers provided so I think you can get an idea about how to earn that in legitimate ways.