It just isn't worth the effort, and this means that many useful posters have stopped contributing to many of the boards.

I've still got 80 sMerits because I don't go out hunting for posts to merit, but I just award them when I find a post that appeals to me. However, it is quite difficult to find these posts. The most promising boards ( the serious discussion ones ) tend to be neglected by most members. I don't visit the Frog Pond very much, as most of the threads seem to be worthless ( in my opinion ) long tail spam fests. I think I have given away too many on the Meta board - there are too many posts about Merit points, and I've just created another one. The beginners board ought to be the place for me to read threads, but that seems to be more about issues other than Bitcoin. Tech support has some interesting threads, but I'm not a power user of Bitcoin, so I'm not sure I'm qualified to make judgements there.

Yes, some good posts are not found, or just discovered by a few people, and then more people did not see, and the author did not get much reward, affecting their enthusiasm, it is necessary to high quality Posts listed to allow more people to see, forming a conscience cycle.