Only on the starting post? But then what if someone writes a really, really high-quality reply?
For example, in response to a Technical Discussion thread, a DannyHamilton facsimile Newbie account may decide to write up an elegant reply that fully answers and questions and adds additional content to the discussion.
What then?
And the monthly giveaway would take a lot of time. Wouldn't it be better to view quality posts as they come out rather than all at once? That makes for some really rough intervals of quality control.
This subtle change might change the overall mentality of users who don't want to spend time clicking +merit on every posts and instead hoard their sMerits.
There's no point of hoarding and theymos stated that if people do it he'll add a decay.