Day by day people are getting to know crypto currency, each day good number of interested people join the BitcoinTalk forum. The way the bounty qualifications and rank was in 2012 is not any more. Getting to the next rank is getting more difficult,KYC came in and many other changes, Now don't you think very soon most signature will only be opened to people from Full member and/or very few number will be given the chances of participation in many bounty campaign to have it convenient?
All these scenario will depend to the project owner and the bounty manager that is managing the bounty campaigns. Right now mos of the project owners and bounty managers are looking for the quality instead of quantity so they are changing their rules and regulations to obtain their target goal.
As the forum become crowded and popular, the rules are changing and we don't know whether it will remain or it will continue to change in the future. Nowadays, ranking up is not that easy as you need to work hard for it and newbies who have no idea yet on what is crypto currencies will likely to rank up pretty slow.