Well as you can see my activity is now 252 which is equivalent to Sr. Member. Since early january i'm excited to become sr member because high rank = high pay in bounty as we all know. But due to merit system is being implemented i dont know when will i be able to reach sr member, but im not against the merit system because i can see the potential of it in the future, to reduce account farmers and shitposters in our beloved forum. I just feel sad because my expectation to become sr member wont happen sooner. Just want to share my inner feelings. lol
I guess you had and we all had to register way back and to be active to be able to be high ranks now. It ain't fair in a sense that everything is harder now, but this is the fact we have to face if you want to participate in the forum. I don't know either if spamming will change, we might see less of it. Who knows maybe those on top simply want to make it harder to climb the rank ladder due to many new accounts ranking. I guess we have to follow the rules there is not much that we can do about it. Yeah it sucks to be near next rank and this hits you in your face.
Even now sometimes when you put much effort in your post it could get unnoticed if people don't read it or even if they wanted to award you with merit, they don't have sMerit to give.
You still have your account creation date and activity which can show to others how long are you involved here on forum tho
I would have to agree with pugman. The main reason why this forum is built is for all the members to express ideas and informations or help one another out when it comes to the aspects of Bitcoin and even other cryptocurrencies. This forum is not a platform solely made for earning money through signature campaigns. If you have genuine intentions towards this forum, the merit system would not bother you. It should inspire you to do better or just keep doing what you do if you believe that you have been constructively contributing to this forum. I understand that most people also felt the same way, but it's time to move on and work hard so that sooner or later you will get the merits that you'll need.
There is nothing bad with earning money while you are contributing here on forum. Why not when you have that option. Marketing is where the money is. Even if you look without signatures forum itself have adds to be able to sustain and pay for mods/server hosting etc. There's nothing bad being involved in marketing. The problem now is you have to post more frequently with every post being the best it can be and hope that somebody will notice and give you merit if your goal is to reach higher ranks, this can be time consuming by its own. On the other hand signature campaigns could give you motivation to hang around this forum for some people.