The thing is, newcomers lack the knowledge of cryptocurrency which basically means the chances of them earning a Merit decrease substantially. Looking back to my first hundreds of posts on this forum will give you a strong idea of the fact that it takes some time until someone finds out what this forum truly is for and why it's much harder than it is thought for a newcomer to share ideas related to Bitcoin that are worth some Merits.

Hence, ranking up already is difficult imo. If someone has enough knowledge about BTC or does enough work for the community to earn the Merits required to be a Sr/Hero Member in a matter of months, that means they truly deserve it imo. No offense to Gazeta (I truly mean no offense) but if this system can easily be gamed and it's unfair to have users "cheating" it, then it means you've played it too and got hundreds of merits in a relatively short time - why would it be fair for a new user not to have the chances you've had to rank up? Someone will have to work more than you've in order to get the same Merit count.

Now imagine you've had this account without knowing a single thing about the way Bitcoin works, about anything related to cryptocurrencies. Consider yourself a complete newbie in this sphere for a minute. Who'd get the merits? You, or would someone who actively corrects your mistakes and teaches you the right things about BTC? Who deserves them more?

The only "fair" thing imo would be the possibility of only sharing merits with people who write things related to BTC. This way, the merit would be 100% deserved as you cannot get it for some off-topic bullshit replies (later edit: did not mean bullshit, as these are more than likely NOT merited) you write or for saying a little "thanks" to BTCTalk @Meta after ranking up. There's, however, probably no way you can create such filters and make only BTC-related posts qualify for Merits.

Think of all the hours you've spent trying NOT to write nonsense and actively participating in as many topics as possible out here. All the hours you've spent translating other users' threads. You're probably one of the lucky ones who've enough free time and are willingly spending it on this forum. Do you really think it's unfair to receive hundreds of merits?

EDIT: It takes me ~15 minutes to usually write a post. I write posts which take me at least 20 minutes almost every day. Now remember I've received ~350 Merits since mid-January. Do I deserve them or not, considering I pretty often happen to write +80 posts/week which account for +18hrs/week spent ONLY on writing my posts?