Sometimes when members make a thread, I go through comments and I see some persons on the comments section that the OP made the thread all because he/she wants merits. Yes, the truth is that we all want merit in every thread we make. The goal of every member in Bitcointalk forum is to make a thread that will generate merit. Merit is like an award here and no one wouldn't like to gain an award.
You're constructing your thoughts wrongly, the thing is whenever a user gets merited, there's a slight excitement that comes along with it, cause I mean, you'd have to feel good that someone else appreciated what you posted and that it's of medium or high quality, then for the average poster, it would excite them cause they will feel and know that they are improving on their posts; but your misconception is in saying that it's the 'sole goal' of every user, cause it's not, while we sure would like someone to appreciate our posts, we should be more concerned in developing our general knowledge, not earning merits, cause if you garner sufficient Bitcoin knowledge, then merits will come effortlessly, thus making it the better choice.
Everyone wants a merit. Telling a member that he made a thread because he wants merits is like telling someone he is hunting for a job because he needs money, and true everyone wants money and everyone desire is to gain merit in a giving write up .
The thing is that one can't actually state categorically what the idea behind a users post is, but then again, there are posts that straight away just seem and look like merit hunting, such posts usually don't stimulate discussions, it adds little or nothing to users knowledge and is usually just about a generic thing that has been discussed time without number, if users don't like the idea of being called merit hunters, they should basically just stop writing out posts of that nature.