lately I see that I have a hard time advancing, being around the 200th position, despite the fact that today I earn merit faster than ever
I don't pay attention to merit rankings anymore, though I did in the first year or two of the system when I was curious as to whether I was as good a poster as I thought I might be (I don't think I'm a great one, but in 2018-19 I thought I was writing some insightful and sometimes funny posts). The results over time showed me that while I'm OK, there are many members who've blown me away as far as earned merits are concerned--and I'm cool with that.
I'm not sure why you're not advancing in the standings as fast as you used to, except for the obvious: the members ahead of you are earning merits at a higher rate than you. As for me, I did notice that I tended to earn fewer merits as time has passed, though I think part of that might be a function of not making 50 or more posts per week like I used to do. A lot of members--newcomers in particular--don't realize that one key tactic of earning mucho merits is simply being a prolific poster. Most posts are either read and not merited or just go unseen altogether, so the more you post the better your chance of earning merits is. No charge for that piece of advice, my peeps.
I don't know if we could consider that there are about 200 (or 150 or 250) high quality posters in the forum. Not only because of my perception, which could be subjective, but also taking into account the following:
It doesn't matter whether someone is in a campaign or not; there are probably at least 250 active members who'd be considered high-quality posters (although the definition of "high quality" would have to be nailed down if we were to start making arguments about that).
I see lots of Chipmixer-quality members making great posts (who aren't in the campaign) and I have most of the forum on ignore! I can only imagine how many brilliant posters there are in the technical sections, not to mention the local boards. So OP, I think that number is much higher than you think--and remember, the number of registered members is enormous; I don't know what the exact number is, but it's over a million. If even 1/20th of those are active currently (50,000), then I'd hope the percentage of "high-quality" members would be greater than (250/50,000)100% = 0.5%.
That having been blabbed, I can't say that even 1/20th of registered members are active. Many of them blew the hot dog stand back in 2018 when bitcoin started tanking and the ICO scam craze imploded.
