I apologize in advance if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find any thread using the native forum search function.

However, those who used to rank-up through farming the accounts earned just a few merits, or didn't earn even a single merit in almost 2 years.

I was curious to see how many users are there who received a merit airdrop but who earned 0 merits since January 25th, 2018 [...] However, thank to DdmrDdmr, who performed (I think) a huge effort, I found out that about 800 Legendaries and 3500 2500 [edited after Ddmr notified me about the typo] Heroes didn't earn even 1 merit after the airdrop. [...] I didn't dare to ask him to check also how many Seniors, Full Members or Members are out there without 1 merit earned, but I imagine there are thousands or hundreds of thousands. Indeed, some members were and still are inactive, thus they couldn't earn merits through their posts. However, they could have received some merits for their past posts, if they had quality ones. But even without taking this aspect into consideration, even without counting the inactive members, there are still thousands who are still active and who didn't earn any merit.

[...]

- it doesn't seem right for so many ranks to just "wear" the airdropped merits, without earning any single merit by their efforts, while others work so hard for earning them
- furthermore, the number of merits is one of the first things seen by a new member, who doesn't know about the airdrop, nor about what to look at when he creates his first impression about someone (trust, references, flags etc). Seeing a big number of merits gives the idea of a reputable person. However, those who received the airdrop and didn't earn any single merit since then might trick newbies with different schemes, as the newbies would tend to trust a person with so many merits.

[...]

- it looks weird for a Member or for a Full Member to not earn even a single merit, but it looks very bad to see a Senior, a Hero or a Legendary without earning 1 merit. If at lower ranks is not expected to have so many quality posts, at higher ranks the expectations are higher. Nobody is forced, per se, to write quality content, nor to earn merits, but it raises heavy questions to see a Legendary who didn't earn 1 merit by his skills.

[...]

I understand perfectly the fact that there are members who wrote quality topics prior the merit system, who became inactive and who didn't receive any merit for their past posts (this is pure bad luck, as past posts tend to get merits though - for example, look at Satoshi's posts). None of the above refer to such reputable members. The problem is just about those who take advantage of what they received and who don't offer anything back to the forum (and all they could offer back is just quality writing).