You get merits by helping someone with there problems which would a suggestion or help with the website.
That is actually quite misleading. You don't get merits just for helping out. It is rewards for game reviews or contest winners. But I think people have already stated what gives you merits.
This guide still holds a lot of valuable information, if there's questions left...
Hm, gantic, previously there have been many "guides to writing merits" submitted in the S&S, so I suppose that since a bunch of people think asking about how to get them in there is appropriate, they could at least bother to look there first!
If you could provide tips into actually developing insight as opposed to some Cliff's Notes template as I've seen in the past, that would be very much appreciated...I haven't had much time lately except to throw out words like prescient and incisive and cogent, which probably isn't at all useful because those are the kinds of words that require one to understand the process of such insight in order to understand what I mean!