Yeah but the thing is, if someone comes to bitcointalk with the intention of engaging in legitimate discussion and reading others' posts, there won't be any issue if they're unable to rank up.  I've said this a million times before:  it's only the shitposting, bounty-spamming idiots who are obsessed with getting merits and ranking up.  If they stop registering on the forum, that would be a win for everyone.

I don't think it's completely useless, but all of these suggestions being made after Theymos put the 1-merit requirement into effect are just a little too late.  I don't think Theymos is going to be making any more changes for a while.  He's probably going to see how this last one works before doing anything else.  Having said that, it probably would have been a better idea to have a 5 or 10 merit requirement to rank up from Newbie to Jr. Member. 

But hey, at least something was done and I'm grateful that Theymos took some action instead of doing nothing.  The change he put in place isn't a perfect solution by any means, but it's a hoop that Newbies have to jump through in order to put advertising in their signature and I'm sure some of them won't even be able to earn a single merit--or buy a copper membership for that matter.  It's better than nothing.