I suggest thresholds of 10, 100, 250, 500, and 1000 merits and the certificates could award titles like "Member", "Full Member", "Sr. Member", "Hero Member", and "Legendary". The forum could even show those titles under the user name. It's a shame that theymos is too busy and will never implement this.
im quoting this so if theymos even implements it you get the credit and he cant claim the idea for himself.
oh, wait..