150 additional merits to go from full member to senior member seems excessive and unfair frankly to those of us that were almost there. It will take years to reach that.
How cute...I am a potential Legendary member (only missing the post count) and I got only 500 Merit instead of 1000.
So be happy that you only got screwed by less then 150
Well B4RF, you have been a forum member almost as long as me, so you are correct that your post count has caused you to not move up in ranks, and if you had been at least minimally active in ever two week activity period, you would have earned enough activity points to have become legendary a year ago (something like that).
So, yeah, none of us knew this change was coming, but those of us who remained active benefited by this unexpected change based on activity level (which includes posting regularly).
i've been a member nearly a year longer than you, but I did take a hiatus from posting for 18 months after some losses to scams, (ASICMINER & LABCOIN) I am not moaning about it though, just see it as a challenge to earn the merits needed.
Some of these newbies haven't been through the rise and fall of bitcoin like some of us.. $250-$80 in a matter of hours, MTGOX going pop! SR going down... all these things don't matter to the newbies moaning as they feel entitled, like spoiled little children.
if you can type a coherent post, and be positive and helpful in the community then senior guys and sources will splash Merits.. its not rocket science..
Hahahahaha...
I had not noticed that you were a member of the forum a year long than me, but your explanation makes sense, and yes, I see the date in your forum profile.
So, yeah, there is nothing wrong with having disagreements with a system, yet you are correct that a whining approach is likely to get you no where quickly. There are also ways to be innovative, such as the level up approach that you took. Of course, not everyone is going to agree with it, and some people will even dislike you for it, but it still seems to be a vehicle to attempt for you to make some of your points to encourage positive posts, and those points/goals are not contrary to those of the forum (in fact they line up).
Also, the point has been made several times, that if you merely want to read posts, you don't necessarily need to rank up, but sometimes if you want to be "taken more seriously" in your posts, then rank does seem to have its benefits- especially in a place like this that has a decent number of disingenuous posters (otherwise known as trolls).
I am not a fan of hierarchies, nor on forums neither in life, but if you find yourself immerged in a hierarcy then you have to play the game and if a twist in the rules suddenly makes the system look unfair, then it sucks. The merit system is a good idea but it has been implemented so as so induce in most of the people the feeling they have been screwed. This would have not happened, had the people received one merit for every point of activity. That would have been fair (or it would be fair, it can still be corrected) and 90% of complains would fade away. As so many others I should have become a Hero tomorrow, now it is likely to take years. BTW I'd be a Legendary myself already hadn't I left the world or cryptos and this forum for a few years our of frustration of things which had damaged me in 2014, just like it happened to TMAN. But that's of course is nobody's fault but mine.
Actually, you are correct that there are a lot of ways that folks might end up overinvesting in crypto in one way or another, and that becomes a kind of gambling, especially, if you end up having a decent amount of value in one place or another, and then you either get robbed or some exchange does an exit scam or something like that. Many of us in the space a long time come to realize that scams proliferate the space, but there still remain decent ways to navigate the space and take reasonable risks rather than extra risks.
Another thing is that sometimes you might not realize the extent of the risk that you are taking, especially when aspects of your portfolio increase so exorbitantly in such a short period of time, but your security precautions do not increase to a reasonably equal level. I ended up getting screwed pretty badly at one point too (in early 2017), but I guess that I had some luck in the matter, too because I did not really feel a need to take a break from my crypto activity because of such high level of getting screwed over, and I think that in my case, the subsequent exorbitant BTC price increase almost negated (in some ways of calculating) the level that I had been screwed in terms of my total holdings. I mean really from early 2017 to late 2017, we had a 20x price increase... which really helped because we had already experienced a 4x price increase in 2016, too (at least if we start calculating from October 2015)... so the outrageously high level of gains - even going quite a bit beyond expectations can help to deal with some of the losses and to put into a better perspective, but still hopefully each of us can learn from our mistakes to improve our own practices and perhaps through forums like this brainstorm with others who go through similar experiences in order to help each other whether that is logic or exposure to new facts, practices or procedures.
Sometimes there may also be new practices or procedures that come on line (in this evolving space), and I suppose getting ranked up will help each of us to be more credible and sometimes share higher levels of insider information with other members that we come to trust through networks like this (but hopefully always with a bit of a grain of salt).