https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439743.msg28861940#msg28861940 - 7 merit points were received for the question "How much merit points newbie need to receive, before he can post in other section?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2770539.msg28896442#msg28896442 - 50 merits for "Right, yesterday he told, that he saved 9% of coins"

High quality posts, huh?

I have few thoughts regarding this. First of all, this could be implemented with purpose to raise the price on the accounts with senior ranks. Admin informed us, that moderators will not moderate merits, than why do we need this? I find it quite suspicious. Secondly, it will help hero/legendary members to save their profits in the bounty campaigns. Now it will be difficult to reach senior ranks, and new rivals will rarely appear. That's my point regarding this new system.

(This assumes the majority of the people participating behaves in a responsible way)

The new system is surely better than the previous one, even though it is over-rewarding "old members". I guess nobody who has joined Bitcointalk in the past six months will EVER manage to become Legendary Member, at least not in less than one or two decades. Fine, this could be a price to pay to avoid the forum getting even more trashy, I fully agree. But I think that the implementation of this new system could be done in a more fair way. The fact that initial merit score is equal to the minimum required for one's rank is not a big deal for Newbies or Juniors, but for higher ranked members, like Senior or Hero Members, it can create big inequalities. For example a freshly ranked Senior Member is now getting the same merit score as someone who has already been a Senior Member for almost half a year and is about to become a Hero. Even more dramatic would be the case of a Hero who has already the activity to be a Legendary but the random system did not grant him the rank yet. A more fair way to distribute the inital merit would be to calculate it proportionally to the actual activity. This would avoid that people like me (I don't want to make it personal but I'm the first example which comes to my mind) who is missing only 4 points of activity (and 5 days) to the rank of Hero Member, instead of getting, let's say 470-480 merits (instead of the 500 of people who already are Heroes), is getting only 250 merits like someone who has just ranked Senior Member 10 days ago, and instead of 5 days it may now suddenly take me years before I can become a Hero - how many very good posts has one to do before he gets 250 merits? If you receive one merit every 4 post you do (on average you are likely to get less IMO) it will take you 1000 more posts to rank up from Senior to Hero, and if you like me were only 4 points of activity from that target, and now suddenly you need another 1000 posts, to say that this is becoming extremely frustrating is a big understatement. On the other side, with a more proportional and balanced initial distribution of merits I think nobody would feel that the system is penalizing them more than it penalizes others - which means people would be more inclined to recognize its substantial fairness, or at least that every effort has been done to achieve the maximum possible fairness.