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As of last Friday, there are 10.952 Jr. Members (that therefore required receiving at least 1 sMerit). Its true though that if I narrow down on those whose account was created in 2019, the toll goes down to 476 Jr Members, which isnt a large amount for 2019 created accounts. (see https://public.tableau.com/shared/23435KRGF?:display_count=yes&:origin=viz_share_link)
On the other hand, I do believe that getting that one merit is a piece of cake if one applies himself to the task. It may take a month or two of perseverance (as was my case), but that is probably it.
If one wants to keep up the pace with the time required to rank-up as it did before the Merit System, youll need to gain a rough average of one merit per day (and that's when @DireWolfM14s calculator comes in handy). That is pretty tough to achieve nowadays, but 1 Merit .. not really.
Here you have a point, and 1 merit/day sounds like easy task at first glance but you need to do this day after day for the next 3 years.
@DireWolfM14s calculator is no doubt a good tool, but is handy for the few, good posters active in here daily.
As for the 476 Jr.Members in 2019, I wonder how much is the percentage of total registered users to make the ratio.