To be honest, I'm still a beginner here. and I want to ask if our ranking will not go up if we don't have merit.
please explain, and thank you
Just as other have mentioned you need both forum activities and merits to rank up in the current forum ranking system, your merits must meet up with your fun activities requirements and merit are awarded by other members of the forum for your quality contributions, but from activities come organically from you posting on the forum your activity is generated automatically in every two-week cycle 14 activities in one activities cycle will be awarded base on your posts counts.
18 June 2013 to 23 January 2018 requires activity with Bitcoin forum posts. Brand New requires 0 posts 0 activities, Newbie 1-28 posts 28 activities, Junior members 30 activities, Members 60 activities, Full members 120 activities, Senior members 240 activities, Hero members 480 activities, Legendary members 960 activities.
Since 24th January 2018, activity as well as merit system has been introduced. Now it's not just about activity but it has to have merit number.
LDL you did well will you analysis of the forum posts, activities and merit as regards to forum ranking, But it looks like you have missed up some points in your analyses and the point in bolded looks to be wrong, especially where you mention that forum activity and merits were introduced on 24th January 2018. This is false and to the best of my knowledge of on this thread, forum activities have been in existence before 2018 and then forum activities are what determined a user rank until January 2018 when the merit system was introduced.