@KingZee, I share some of your criticism, but the problem is that we haven't found a system better than the current Merit points. The problem is that the forum rank must be determined by an indicator no user can obtain in an automated way. Activity is too easy to obtain by spamming and alt-account-farming.

If you find the Philosopher's Stone - a real alternative that shares the positive "anti-spam" effect of the "scarce" Merit points and avoids the negative ones - crippled forum functionality for newbies and a long way to obtain better ranks - I think the community or the mods would consider discussing it.

I have also posted some ideas to make the system a bit less "discriminating" for "legit" newbies (those really interested in cryptocurrency), mainly the idea of a probation period for Newbies (to give them a signature from the start but removing it if a post from them was reported and legitimately deleted), and also to allow fractions of merits to be awarded (so lower ranked members can also say "thanks" more often). Unfortunatenly, they weren't really well received.

As a side note: I am more convinced every day that we don't really need the "Legendary" category of users. First, because 1000 merits are very difficult to obtain, and the distance between "Hero" and "Legendary" is extreme (500 merit points - most likely 2-3 years of good posting). But also because it's a title given with influence of a random number (activity between 750 and 1250 or so 775 and 1030).

We can keep it as a "honourific" title. But it shouldn't be necessary to be a Legendary to get full forum functionality (full signature, for example) - a Hero should already get everything.