I have noticed that meta has tended to not have as many threads with many posts getting merit recently. Same with reputation. I am not sure if this is because less merit is being circulated, or because people have reacted to criticisms from certain forum members, or for some other reason.
I haven't seen all that many threads in Reputation as of late, period. That could be due to the decrease in drama in the past few months, but who knows. I wasn't aware that the merit distribution in Meta had gone down, though it makes sense in a way. It doesn't seem that as many threads are being created in that section compared to times past. That'll probably change eventually, so I'm not particularly worried.
The Gambling discussions together with the Altcoin sub are the two most spammed parts of this forum. No wonder that many merit sources avoid it like the plague. It's difficult to pick out merit-worthy posts amongst a whole lot of rubbish.
The gambling section is one of the ones I have on ignore, primarily because I'm not a gambler and thus don't care to read about gambling-related topics. But yeah, the times I have visited the section it's been a complete mess, although I do remember there were a few members who made some pretty good posts. I'll leave the merit-granting to others who frequent that section, however. I'm not about to scroll through threads I'm not interested in to find posts that I don't want to read, even if they're good.
