I've never seen a forum where you have to sacrifice your own reputation, to give someone else rep. Why was this merit system implemented? It isn't a good indication of quality users AT ALL. It really makes the forum un-attractive to new users, because it's so hard to progress on here.
This is nothing confusing & weird.
1. merit is not equal to reputation, it is only used to encourage high quality posts, which is similar to a compliment to others.
People with more merits don't mean that has a good reputation，there are always some merit abusers.
2. The merit that you can use to send to someone else is called sMerit. When you send sMerit out, it won't reduce the merit you own.
3. You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.
You can check your Merit and sMerit here：
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=meritFor example：
Now your merit is 0, when you receive 1 merit, your merit will be 1, and sMerit will be 0.5, but your merit system can't display this 0.5 sMerit, and it can't be sent, because the minimum sMerit that can be sent is 1.
If you check your Merit system, it should be like this：
You have received a total of 1 merit. This is what determines your forum rank. You typically cannot lose this merit. You have 0 sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people.
When you receive 1 merit again, your merit will be 2, and sMerit will be 1, then you can send this 1 sMerit to others, and your own 2 merit will not be reduced, but after you send sMerit, your sMerit will be 0.
If you check your Merit system, it should be like this：
You have received a total of 2 merit. This is what determines your forum rank. You typically cannot lose this merit. You have 1 sendable merit (sMerit) which you can send to other people.
