So I see tons of people asking this question and so I wanted to share the answer after doing much research on the subject.
MERIT EXPLAINED FOR NEWBS!!
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 along side activity all users now have a merit score and people need both a certain activity level and a certain merit score in order to reach higher ranks.
Original posting can be found here:
Bitcoin Forum > Other > Meta > Merit & new rank requirements Link to this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.msg28856522#msg28856522Here 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 based on your membership rankings:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1khSA28Ab6miwyknp3JvStcL0Yu05SIbGBDZDKcOLO6s/edit#gid=0
See this
infographic recommended by the admin Theymos!!
https://imgur.com/n4IkACkAs I said before there is much discussion about this on the "meta" section of bitcointalk. Good luck to all us newbies!
<3