Merit system is highly unfavorable particularly to the new members for growing in the ranks but concept of "Merit" will attract crowd to the platform like steemit where power of liking good content is in the hands of all I think.
It's actually favourable to new members who are willing and able to write constructive posts. The forum is much better suited to serve its purpose since the changes.
I don't think it will attract people who simple aim to have power. There may be an element of people wanting to be 'powerful' and have high ranks and many merits but they will be people who are interested in cryptocurrencies. It wouldn't be possible to receive merits if they were not.
OP's English isn't good, so frankly I question his ability to judge a good post unless it's on a local board. I'd challenge him to give some examples of quality unmerited posts.
While I agree that OP's English is not fantastic, I would say that the assumption that someone with below average English language skills cannot judge the quality of a post is perhaps a little unfair. In fact what makes some posts so good and merit worthy is the fact that they can be understood by both native and non-native English speakers.
Why this merit doesn't get to good posts is simply because those scouting for good posts to merit, might not see much posts or maybe have exhausted all their merits.
This will only improve as more merit sources are added and there is less spam on the forum. The spam has already increased hugely in my opinion.
If I am not mistaking, merits are being shared among friends irrespective of how valuable or low quality a post is.
You're not mistaken, if you come across this then you can report it in one of the threads in the meta section.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-suspected-users-that-are-abusing-merit-30-2896910Maybe the merit thing should be looked into or everyone should stay content at their current rank.
It will be constantly reviewed and debated and hopefully improvements will be made. I think most people are of the consensus that there's not enough sMerit to go around right now and hopefully this will be the next thing Theymos will look in to. It's not impossible to rank up right now. It will take time and probably longer than it should do but if you post quality posts you can rank.
You must remember that it's been less than a month since merit was introduced and while most will agree it's far from perfect, it's a really good start.