It's the hierarchy - nobody wants to be at the bottom and not even be able to post pictures. Yo can buy high ranking account - but in my opinion this is not fair because again even on bitcointalk forum who is about fairness and decentralization people with money get the best of it.
You can create competing forum and make it "fair".
Just remember every person may have his own definition of "fair".
It's difficult to merit posts because you get very little spendable merit, for example I got 17 initially.