I get your point ,but it's a bit unfair to distribute merit points by default like that . I mean there are Jr.members that have been excited to finaly reach member and have only few days to hit it , then this system gets introduced and they might get stuck with that rank for a while now and the same goes for other ranks . I believe the merit points shoul've been distributed according to the activity number not the rank.
I was 5 points away from eligibility for consideration as Legendary, and now I am 500 merit points away from it. It's will be even harder for me to gin points as I don't normally get involved with all the peripheral stuff that has taken over the forum.
It is apparent that the stress caused by the promotion difficulties, and the loss of revenue from sig spamming, justifies the introduction of this system. It is an information exchange, and a Bitcoin help forum, not an employment bureau or an advertising hoarding for the use of non-Bitcoin users.