I see theymoss didn't even give any chance for members who was waiting rank change today)) I think it's strange, all member are good for forum, not only hero. And if you implemented your new system so suddenly you should give at least another one rank change by old rules, I think would be fair. And It's not a secret that no-one likes this new system except members with highest rank, who don't care about it) And I don't care too. But it may be that very soon we will have "fork" of this forum with more fair rules and all people and startups will move there. Really don't understand you theymoss.
I think that you are going a bit much in your criticism; however, I do think that a fair and repeated point that comes out in your post is that some kind of initial distribution of merit based on activity level or even prorata would have been a bite even-handed. But even given the validity of such criticism and the merit of such proposal to possibly fix the initial distribution of merit in the forum, I doubt that any of this goes so far as to reasonably imply that Theymos or any administrator or even any high ranking member would intentionally change the system in order to exacerbate unfairness, as you seem to be suggesting such kinds of bad faith.
I clearly see that this forum is now taken in "one hands" and this is why I'm disappointed. It is not that what Bitcoin and blockchain technology developed for! This forum was about Bitcoin earlier, but not today. And this is the main reason why I'm writing now. It's totally against free decentralized vision! And every forum in it's initial mission is free for any discussion, but I don't see this here now. I see only high-ranked people who realize that every day more and more people comes to blockchain ecosystem and to this forum(coz it's the main place for to discuss it) and after some time they become a member's/full member's/Sr. etc, and it's not interesting for old high ranked people that newbies will wear signatures and earn 'their' money. And this group decided to implement some system, which means something good for forum but by it's initial mission it has to remove competitors for to take their money, it's now clearly for everyone. Why do you think in this thread writes only high-ranked people and only positive reviews about merits??? All others are scared that somebody will give them red trust for nothing ad they will not be eligible for to wear promo signatures. Such was happened many times while I read this forum.
And I will open your eyes now, i have a discussions about this issue almost every day with many people who have an accounts here, they all are disappointed too and nobody likes this system absolutely nobody, except high-ranked people of course ))
I think it would be better to remove all signatures to all ranks, then you will get your spam reduce immediately.
And I can say many more about this, but as I already see, I doesn't have any sense. Forum is already taken in hard claws and it is only beginning. I think that next will be Full member, I predict the hard times for them)) So be patient guys and do not wear signatures now, if you can. Good luck )