it was easy to rank up on this forum when the merit system was not in place all that was needed then was to have sufficient Post's with certain amount of activities to rank up on all level and ranks.
I hatw merit system before due to so hard to rank up. But realizing its purpose then I can see that addition of this only added a growth to every users to be able to produce quality one. Clearly it is designed for improvement of post and avoid spammer to easily rank up which is quite fair. Once a user is serious enough to make good post then ranking or acquiring merits would never be hard for them. Its proven effective as I saw some newbies stepping up their game to the next level.