There seems to be a lot of confusion with this new system, apparently plenty of users spend most of their time in the bitcoin and alt discussions and haven't noticed the change. Also I don't see many users actually getting merrits despite a lit of good quality posts, of course not talking about myself here. Would be interesting to see some real data around that as it might only be my own perception. Any others who noticed that too?
Even for a newly implemented system that is less than a month old, there is a decent amount of information that is publicly available, including a large number of threads on the topic of merits.
Of course, with some more passage of time, more data will generate to clarify how it is being used, and you may be correct that there are some parts of the forum that use the merits less and likely there are going to be some issues around getting merits down to lower ranks from the upper ranks.
Some threads have been created to attempt higher ranked members to assist lower ranked members to earn merits to rank up or to at least to petition attention to posts that might not have received as much merits as they might seem to deserve.
Further: Have you looked at the thread announcing the new merit system?
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/merit-new-rank-requirements-2818350Or, have you looked at the merits stats page that is available to everyone through the merit link that is in their profile page?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats
