Many will wonder after reading the title. Maybe many will blame this idea.
But, in my opinion, ranking up is way too easy now. Why I say that:
- for ranking up to Jr. Member you need just 1 merit; for Member you need only 10. Indeed, it seems so hard for a Newbie to earn 1 merit but it is not hard actually (explained below).
- activity allows to become Legendary in 2 years or 2 years and a few weeks. Literally speaking, in real world, legends are built in far more time, not just in 2 years.
- many users help those who need a few more merits to rank up by giving them easily the respective merits. I think even if you are 1-10 merits away from the next rank, you should work for them as you did until that point.
- as far as I saw, merits are awarded too easy. Merit sources and members are more or less generous; besides, there are many merit giveaway threads.
- practically, all you need in order to rank up is to be a honorable person and to wait. Honorable person means the following: to not spam, to not scam, to not plagiarize and post what you think is helpful here. To act as a normal person.. And users will appreciate your work. They will give you merits if you post useful consideration and if you don't try to cheat the system. So [/b]merit barrier is not a real barrier at all[/b] if you act with good intentions.
In my opinion, the only real barrier is the time barrier. Because you have to wait for the activity points, but even this barrier has too low standards. Maybe Legendary rank should be possible in 5-10 years, not in 2. What legendary person in the history became a legend in 2 years?!
So I suggest to raise the merit standards because it is way too easy to earn them and also raise the needed activity for higher ranks.
On paper the merit system is fine I think, but in reality it is very biased and I will explain why.
From my own experience I noticed it is much easier to receive merits if you write bullish predictions. I would advise to post in the Speculation section and make bullish predictions everyday, this way you will rank up very quickly.
I myself received 46 merits so far and most of them were after I predicted a bull run, or believe it or not but I also received a merit for simply writing: "
Hello, I bought 0.37 BTC today, fingers crossed" (there was nothing else in my post).
Then we entered a bear market and I thought it was necessary to alert people on it, I posted charts with arguments and facts, barely got any merit for that and all my targets (bullish and bearish) came true eventually.
Bottom line: very biased system but there is nothing to do about it, human nature I guess. It's just like Youtube, make a video with insane bullish prediction and it will get more views than a rational bearish prediction. Merits here are just the same.
PS: I absolutely don't care about merits, I didn't sign up here for that, the above is a totally objective point of view. Hey it's not even a point of view but a plain fact.