ranking on the account bitcointalk to ride is determined by how much of our activity and there are already minimum requirement if you want can take rank, besides merit also very influential in the rise in rank on this account.
Without having enough merits points those activity are useless after all. Merits will the primary reason for an account to rank up. There will some a time when forum users will have so much activity and will still be on the same rank as they were when the merit system was introduce.