Quote from: MXgirl150 on April 01, 2018, 12:48:56 PM

So I answered this question before, I wanted to share the answer with you too: the Merit system was introduced in January of 2018. According to forum Administrator Theymos, "The merit system was done to increase the quality of the posts and to prevent the spam." According to Theymos it does this in two ways:

1. 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.
2. Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

So 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.

The original post can be found here: Bitcoin Forum > Other > Meta > Merit & new rank requirements
Link to this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522

Here is the new requirements for ranking up according to the Admin Theymos (This is the copy from the Merit & new rank requirements post)

Brand new
0 activity, 0 merit

Newbie
1 activity, 0 merit

Jr Member
30 activity, 0 merit

Member
60 activity, 10 merit

Full Member
120 activity, 100 merit

Sr. Member
240 activity, 250 merit

Hero Member
480 activity, 500 merit

Legendary (it's a range)
775-1030 activity, 1000 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."

This is a very helpful post called "Comprehensive guide to Bitcointalk. Newbie friendly + calculator and infographic" Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2534500.0/url

Here is a calculator to calculate your membership rankings:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1khSA28Ab6miwyknp3JvStcL0Yu05SIbGBDZDKcOLO6s/edit#gid=0

See this info graphic recommended by Admin Theymos!!
https://imgur.com/n4IkACk

As I said before there is much discussion about this on the "meta" section of bitcointalk.

Good luck to all us newbies!

Thanks alot!!!