So many people hear about bitcointalk forum from friends, families, internet and so on they where not given the full details of the Dos and Don'ts (the rules of the forum) of the forum. they where only told about the juicy parts of the forum because of that they are excited to join without making deep research.
Newbie should be corrected and not to be use to earn merits, most of the top rank members earn most of their merits from attacking and reporting newbie.
The purpose of merits system is to encourage quality and helpful post in the forum. So if someone earns merit by correcting a newbie, it means the merit is serving the purpose it was introduced for and there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. This mentality is the reason some newbies are not comfortable being here. Take a look at your profile for example and see the date you registered and the amount of merits you have earned. You can not grow when you feel attacked when you are being corrected. For anyone who's interested to learn will ignore all the criticism and learn from them instead of being discouraged or feel offended.
It doesn't matter whether you are invited by a friend or you discovered this forum yourself, it's your sole responsibility to get yourself acquainted with the rules. Even in school, some times students are being discipline by teachers as a form of correction of wrong doings. You can not expect newbies to be treated like an when from all indications they're not ready to comply with the forum ethics.