With something new to improve the forum.. new money making path opens.
Not supporting it but I doubt some people will think I support it unless I say it loud and clear! after the line, i made above 

From newbie to member shouldn't be too hard.  Member to Full member is also do-able but might take longer than people like.  Beyond that, will take some serious ass kissing.  Maybe even require to go on a date with Theymos. 

Theymos doesn't want to ban people, he is giving a fair opportunity to us to either earn our ranks or be a begging slave with 10 accounts trying to earn money that one account with a high rank could'v earned.

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@theymos, is there a bot like the one used by Bitmixer to check for signatures of campaign participants? *I am going to merit any body with no signature for a week, do you think people would still post if they are not getting paid? contributing while you have no incentive is merit worthy. lets torture these beggars  by only giving them merits if they have no signature, they have tortured **us all this time.

*That is a lie, I am running out of sMerits.
**Can I be in "us" for a few days?

#usol.

If some Junior is not able to get 10 merits to get to the Member rank he surely doesn't deserve to rank up. I think we can carve this truth in stone. As for rising to higher ranks, either the supply and especially circulation of sMerits in the system will grow considerably, or effectively people might start considering your suggested Plan B and Plan C

I have no problem with frank talk; however, there is something else that is underlying your word choice that is likely interfering with your thinking about this matter.... you see you called it "ass kissing," and sure, I have as many problems as the next guy regarding hierarchy and even dislike for peeps who abuse their authority, rank or position... but you don't necessarily need to consider the whole matter as ass kissing in order to be able to think more positively about the matter, which is merely an attempt to be civil to other people and to back up what you are saying, and if you are challenging things, then have facts and logic that back up your points.  Sometimes, even if some members do not like your facts and logic, other members may like what you say and decide to merit your post for any subjective reason, including that you might have caused them to think about a subject differently or that you were willing to say something that others would not say, so in the end, there are ways to get merits in this system, and furthermore, Theymos is not the ONLY one who gives out merits.

I think the idea behind introducing the merit system is very, very sound.  There were so many ridiculous posts and some users were posting the same thing over and over in multiple threads just to pump up their post count. However, would you mind if I suggest one tweak to complement the system:

There are so many posts with good content that I appreciate, but since I was allocated just one merit at my rank, which I have already used, I am unable to give merit for those posts. Now, as I understand it, certain users are "merit sources" and can create merit. Given the volume of posts, it must be pretty time consuming for them to read all new posts and allocate merit to to the posts that deserve them. Perhaps in addition to merits, you could consider introducing something similar to the Facebook 'likes' system for all members to use,  to signal that post as a good one?

So say for example, there's a good post that deserves merit but I have no merit to give. I can at least leave a 'like' on that post instead. If a post accumulates 50 or 100  'likes'.. then maybe it could be flagged for a merit source, who can then read over the post and decide whether  or not to award it merit.

Sounds good to me, i think that's a really good idea that "like" system can go along with merit system and i totally agree that sometimes i see some posts (like yours) that i wanna smerit but got no points at all cause i gave it to another person or i got none cause i've been posting trash but it should affects only me not people that gives us a good content!

That's exactly why the system has been implemented the way it has. Any like system would be too easy for account farmers to abuse whereas the merit system only gives a supply of spendable merit to the sources who are all trusted.
Rather than put so much effort into trying to think up other systems maybe time would be better spent finding some good threads and getting involved in the conversations. That's the way to get Merit and then have sMerit to spend.

+1 for the idea