The whole OP seems like it was written by a person who was drunk and angry at the world at the time.
99% of the posts are from bounty hunter spammers
Are you talking about all users who wear signatures or are you singling out only those that belong to altcoin campaigns? I would say it depends where you post and what you read. I don't see bounty hunter spammers in the sections I am active in, and that's in discussions about Bitcoin. I don't go near the altcoin boards anymore, and I agree with you that part of the forum is a disaster. 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?
Except it doesn't work that way. That's how it was in the past, before the merit system was introduced. You rose in rank just with posts and activity. But now you need to add merits in the mixture. And unless you contribute to the forum, you won't be earning merits. 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.
Not necessarily. It could also have meant that the person posted a big amount of posts but without any quality at all. Now, other people need to like and appreciate your contributions for you to rank up. Quantity alone won't get you far.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!
It takes more then a year to become legendary if you are active during every activity period. Try 2 years. You are a senior member because you weren't active enough in the old days to rank up when it was easier. And since the merit system was introduced, you are also lacking the needed merits. the site admin should abolish all this corrupt nonsense and just have ads, that means its a level playing field and no corruption.
This has got nothing to do with your rank, the rank of others, or how the merit system works. What you are saying here is that the merit system doesn't work and it results in too many members ranking up too fast. So, do you think it's better to go back to the old ways when you didn't need any merits at all, and all you needed was a large enough post count that no one needed to read or appreciate in any way? Don't you see the lack of logic there? You want to get rid of a system where it's harder to rank up to reinstate one where it's easier to rank up, so that the forum would have less legendary members.