Go through the relevant stickies in this section (sespecially rules and ranking) :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0Welcome to the forum! If you're here to learn you should get merit and be able to rank up pretty fast, but if you don't that's also fine ranks don't mean too much anyway if you write good content and interact meaningfully.
My primary agenda is to learn first not much inquisitive to earn merits but I know that with positive communication here and creativity someone can equally make earn merit without been over conscious to earn merit ,I acknowledge your guidelines senior, one day I will rank up.