The chances of being merited even a few times are very small let alone gaining hundreds of merits.
Common misconception. Your chances of being merited is just small if you don't deserve to be given merit in the first place. It's like being a new bottom-level employee in a company that doesn't know crap but still complains why you're not getting a raise or a promotion.
that's why i wouldn't work for a company where i "didn't know crap" let alone complain but i don't see how your comparison is actually relevant at all in this scenario either? The chances are small whichever way you look at it, i have since starting this thread gone through a large volume of merited users and 99% of them are not posting anything special or greatly assisting the forum they are merely just posting in the correct place that users that have a lot of merit to give frequent. It doesn't seem balanced at all and i work as an analyst for a job in the banking sector so i am used to reviewing and sorting through data such as this. I think that it will be extremely hard for the majority of people to rank up here and in general it is highly probable that this forum will suffer as a consequence of that. I have a question for you also, do you not think that If bitcointalk refuses to adapt to this increased userbase than it's ability to survive against competitors and continue to be the favored place for crypto discussion will continue for very long?