As you know , ranking in bitcointalk thread has been changed after 24th Jan , a new feature called " merit" has been added to profile .What is merit ?
•You get merit points when someone sends you some for one of your posts. Additionally, when someone sends you merit points, half of those points can be sent by you to other people.
what has changed in ranking?
•In addition to activity, everyone now has a merit score, and you need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher member ranks.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
•This 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.
•Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.