His suggestion isn't the solution, but mine would. The problem is that if the initial merit score is equal to the minimum required for the rank you have, at least half of the people of this forum (those whose activity is closer to the upper range of their rank than to the lower one) will feel they have been treated in a way which is not fair. That's 50% of the members of Bitcointalk. And those who were only one week away from the next rank will feel particularly bad, especially if you are going for a higher rank (like from Senior to Hero) and in one moment you are losing 6 months of activity, since activity without the corresponding merit has no value any more. On the other side, if the initial merit score is more progressively and proportionatelly distributed, nobody would feel the system has treated HIM in an unjust way. Someone has said that now it's too late for changes because the system has already been implemented. This would be true if you had to take away merits from people. But in fact, what I'm suggesting is that people would get some additional merits to fit or anyway somehow reflect their activity count more than just their rank. What I'm saying is that more precision here would mean much more justice. My view is that as much justice as technically possible is badly needed in any big community which doesn't want to fall apart.