It seems to me that the best way to get merit is posting in the meta section. A lot of you guys here have merit, everywhere else, I don't see it as much.
Meta received 8,81% of total sMerit from the 1st of June 2018 onwards, so 91,19% has been awarded to other boards. There are therefore plenty of other awarded sections. Meta probably has some of the most interesting conversations going on, and that attracts higher quality posters probably than boards that are a complete swamp of spam.
The base of it all is still being capable of creating a decent content. Without that capability, it doesn’t matter where you post. Placing a three legged into a race is going to lose wherever you decide to place it.