I feel like that the forum did merits to get quality post. And the main reason is to limit the amount of people on that rank. Without those merits people can easily become a Hero member in a few months. But because of merits they have to make quality post rather than making average post and getting the same out come.
Yes, and recently it has started working. People want high-rank to join quality campaigns. Since the merit system was put in place, the high-rank member think they are still safe with their current rank and there is no attempt to improve the quality of the posts. When low-rank members start to work hard and meet the criteria of being a good poster, high ranking starts to lose the opportunity to join the campaign.
Although there may still be merit tradings out there, I think their efforts will be in vain if they are not really a good poster. In fact, high-quality managers have fair qualifications to employ campaign participants and shitposter will never have the opportunity.