One negative i have seen is am not really seeing any merit being dished out lately, except perhaps in the Bitcoin discussion forum.. maybe average joe has run out of merit? or maybe the initial boom is over and this is the normal state? or maybe it's cyclical? i dunno, just seems to have stagnated a bit..
I've still got merit to give out, and I had a look round after I read your post. I nearly gave some to a newbie, but his post was capitalised, and I hate that, so I passed over his post. Everything else seemed to be repetitive and obvious, and didn't get me enthusiastic. There are quite a few good tech replies on the serious help board, and it's a shame that they don't get merit. None of them was in my area of (limited ) expertise, so I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to act.
I've now got a lot of people on ignore for merit begging and trading, using oversized text and the misuse of graphics, so maybe I shouldn't go looking for posts to award with merit.
I've had to adopt a fairly strict policy on post format because it was taking far too long for me to read threads. This is a personal decision, and doesn't reflect forum policy of course. However, posters may like to consider the fact that they won't get merit if their post isn't read. Making your post easy to read and well structured tempts the viewer to find out more. Over sized text makes it harder for him to scan quickly.