I've always bought into the notion that higher-ranked members tend to earn more merits, because it seems almost self-evident to me. Older members have a lot more invested in the forum, are likely more knowledgeable (except for goobers like me), and know what kinds of posts are worth it to make. Newbies....who the hell knows? They don't have a good history on bitcointalk, that's for sure. But there are always a bunch that keep at it, keep climbing the ranks, and end up becoming established members of our fine forum. They're just rare, that's all.
This is a forum, higher members that are active do come to post on this forum daily or almost daily to learn from each other. They make posts in a way they read unique posts that they get ideas from to later make better posts too. When I met two friends some years ago, I noticed if I am arguing with one about something, the other friend is almost all the time in support of the other friend. Before I met them, they have been together for years, they have discussed many things they have agreed upon many times before I met them both. That is how this forum is. But the difference is that newbies do not know what old ranked members know, but when he began to read more than post, studying the establish members, his discussion would start to be similar with those of old ranked members and he will rank up.
But I'm sure nothing beats ChartBuddy.
You can't tell me that guy doesn't use some bot to post those charts about bitcoin price every 1 hour in the wall observer thread, surely he will be number one, the reason why post quantity with no quality is useless.
ChartBuddy is a bot.
We need to give him some time off as he will soon pass me by.
I don’t feel like posting 30 days in a row and doing 30 posts a day which won’t make me strech the lead much at all. it would be 900 to 720 and far too much work.