The laughable state of this forum, I've been reading this website since at least 2014, most active during 2015-2016 and the website is just unreadable at this point. 99% of the posts are from bounty hunter spammers
Too many Legendary accounts!
There seem to be hundreds of legendary accounts and they have all got there through some sort of merit cartel as far as I can see. just spam enough pointless repetitive posts to get to legendary status? Back when I first started reading, legendary status used to mean something, it meant that poster had something useful to contribute. Now it just means they merited themselves with an alt or they bought sMErits online and they spammed the forum enough times.
The thing that grinds my gears the most is that there are legendary accounts with a join date of less than a year ago, and here's my account which is operated by a normal user, who has contributed to actual discussion about actual real issues since 2015 with a Senior member level LOL!
A lot of what you said is just factually incorrect. Back when you first started reading all the Legendary rank meant was that that person had made at least one post every two weeks for two years. The merit system was introduced to stop people just farming accounts by logging on once a fortnight to make a mere shitpost just to collect the activity. Today, it's very unlikely you would be able to achieve Legendary rank by merely shitposting. You actually have to have a lot of posts that are worthy of meriting to get the 1000 merit needed. It's actually a fairly decent system as it means you don't move up the ranks by merely posting rubbish. Of course, like any system or preventative measure it isn't perfect but it does it's job for the most part.
I would agree that there are too many shitposters and legendary accounts though. A higher post-Legendary rank should be implemented that requires a very large amount of merit to really sort the wheat from the chaff.
Since your activity is below Legendary requirement (775), first thing that you would have to change is to post more consistently and you might reach Legendary rank, evenbtually.
Why not just abolish all these ranks entirely and have reputation based on, you know, actual reputation not a "reputation system" which exists just to be gamed by a cartel
What makes you think that also wouldn't be gamed? Anything that can be abused will be. All you will have is people then farming reputation. People already do that by doing deals or taking out loans with the right people they otherwise don't want or need just to repay it and collect a nice green feedback. Rinse and repeat. The merit system is already somewhat reputational based as it means that a decent amount of people have thought your posts were worthy of meriting.
the site admin should abolish all this corrupt nonsense and just have ads, that means its a level playing field and no corruption. You still make money. You think having thousands of beggars making pointless posts will make the forum better? this is now a low quality forum with low quality users.
If there's money involved then there will be corruption involved somewhere down the line. It's also not a level playing field as those with the most money and deeper pockets get to advertise whilst others are potentially priced out. I do agree something should be done about all the shitposters though and there should be repercussions for those people who make low quality posts and for the campaign mangers who don't do their job properly and pay for it.