I'm with jet Cash on this one. This is a forum to discuss issues related to Bitcoin. If that is what you use the forum for then the following are true.
1) You will earn plenty of merit.
2) Your rank will not have any impact on your ability to use the forum.
Or you could simply implement a minimum merit/month feature to maintain your current rank, if you don't earn a certain amount of merit within the month you drop to the previous user level......
Seriously dude, do you think satoshi's account should get demoted because he doesn't use it anymore?