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.
And what's really the problem if people rank up by "being normal" and "not spammer" as you said ? xD
It's already too hard to rank up, and making it harder would just kill the cause! 2 years is still fine to be a legendary, and tbh it takes more than that time, 2 years is just an estimate.
If the forum really needs tighter ranking up rules, I would say to delete the airdropped merits that people recieved as they ranked up before the merit systems were introduced and they got it by default. So many people who ranked up by virtue of their activity has never earnt a single merit after that and many of them are the real spammers and scammers!