Yes I do think also that this merit system is going to make it hard to rank up. I see a lot of jr. member getting stuck and are having a hard time ranking up to member. I am afraid that some of the higher ranks would not even give up their merits at all.
That's how it is
supposed to work. Look at the Bitcoin Discussion forum right now. On the front page there are the following posts:
Should I buy bitcoin?
Should I sell bitcoin?
Psychic investment advice
Can bitcoins be sold for cash?
Someone selling memes for bitcoin
These are low quality topics. They barely even belong on the forum at all, let alone allowing people to rank up by posting such vacuous nonsense. The whole point of the merit system is:
Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc. Link