Having spent far too much time reading about merits lately I've noticed a tendency towards suggesting changes that would benefit the person suggesting them rather than benefit the forum overall. Now I'm going to have to try very hard not to argue against change for self interest. If the merit system hadn't been introduced I would automatically have become a Hero tomorrow, but that doesn't bother me at all. Whether anyone believes me or not, I really don't care what my rank is.

The reason I disagree is that I believe the intention of the system is to block the spammers from ranking up and not to cause an obstacle to anyone using the forum as intended. The average of 1 merit a day requirement to keep within the existing activity based schedule seems well chosen to achieve that goal. Now that the initial distribution of sMerit has dried up it has become impossible for shitposters to ever achieve Hero or above (Sr. is probably also beyond their grasp). Anyone who is here for the right reasons should easily outstrip the 1/day requirement and not be affected by it at all.

Your suggestion is rather to change the ranking system to mark out exceptional posters (like yourself). Now that is not a bad objective per se, but not what Merit was meant to be the solution to. It is actually very easy to spot the exceptional posters simply by looking at the actual number of merit they have been awarded. I know this has already been suggested elsewhere but I'd go along with the introduction of a new beyond Legendary rank. That would indeed mark out the exceptional members and also give the existing Legendaries something to aim for.