Don't judge someone's knowledge of bitcoin and bitcointalk from their ranks because there are lot of exceptions to explain the ranks is not actually determine everything, just go to the technical board where you see low ranked members who have more knowledge about how bitcoin things works than some random legendary posting in bounties or altcoin board.
Exactly mate we can not judge the book by its cover and also here in this forum we can not say that all high ranks are knowledgeable enough but as we saw there are many Hero members or even Legendary Members who still spamming or let's say shitposters. And not all newbies are literally newbies, many newbies have already experienced about bitcoin and have more knowledge and as we saw here in forum there are many newbies who contributed and make useful topics and replies.
Even myself not really great with the technical knowledge about cryptocurrencies even though I have been here for more than 4 years, if there is no merit system is in practice then probably I will be having legendary member rank under my name but I know that I don't deserve it actually so as I said the ranks can't be considered here, it's all about the content that someone is conveying to the community.