Being a Merit Source, with a more than decent allowance, is a time consuming job.
I think LoyceV and Theymos are not on very different positions actually: giving 50 merits to anyone not just plainly spammer, and the forum would benefit from this, as the merits would probably slowly trickle down in the merits economy.
But I personally prefer to do small amount of merits per post, taking my time to read the forum.
Yes, this require some time, but hey, I did ask to be named Merit Source!
All this to state the point: it's very hard to deem a single merit transaction as unfair. This could have been some sort of "delayed" merits for a previous post the merit sender couldn't fine anymore and wasn't merited at the posting time because of a variety of reason. Or there are a ton of other legitimate reasons for this.
Whatever.
OP, concentrate on your own posting habit and on your own posting style.
Merits will eventually come.
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I have never awarded more than 4 sMerits in one go, but
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Yes, but...
[FUN] Is DdmrDdmr even human? (why that post is not on Meta?) I was so clueless at the time!