What are these so-called Merits and why do we need it?
Bitcointalk has now implemented a merit system that means you'll now need to have both activity and merit in order to get promoted to higher level.
Due to a lot of registration by newcomers and bulk of useless posts, this step was necessary but this doesn't mean you need to make quality posts from the beginning. You'll help plenty of time to learn from your mistakes and start posting something that's really constructive and useful for others otherwise you'll be stuck on the same level for days.
These discussions can be seen vividly on Meta section but I'm posting it here on my local thread because I see a lot of useless posts here regularly by newbies. It's pretty common as I use to do this often too in my days. But now the scenario has changed. You might get promoted till Member but the road ahead of that will be tough if you don't do something different from others.
For becoming a newbie from brand new you'll need only 1 activity and 0 merit.
Junior member will need to have at least 30 activity but still, you don't need any merit.
From here on forward, you'll need to learn to make quality posts or else you'll be stuck on Junior Member.
However, you'll only need 10 merits and 60 activities to get promoted to Member status.
Now, the real question is, how will be able to get these Merits?
There are Merit sources on the platform. These are the people with a lot of merits and of course higher ranking such as Sr. Member, Hero Member, and Legendary.
They have credited Merits on the level of their ranking during the implementation of the Merit system.
For example, I was Full Member during the implementation and for becoming the Full Member one need to have at least 100 Merits, therefore I was credited with 100 Merit points.
On every post, there will be an option for +Merit through which one will transfer the Merit to the user who posted it. Suppose I transfer 2 merit point to someone then that will be split into two namely Merit(1) and sMerit(1). Merit is what you can keep to get promoted while sMerit will be used to transfer it further along to other users.
| Rank | Required activity | Required merit |
| Brand new | 0 | 0 |
| Newbie | 1 | 0 |
| Jr Member | 30 | 0 |
| Member | 60 | 10 |
| Full Member | 120 | 100 |
| Sr. Member | 240 | 250 |
| Hero Member | 480 | 500 |
| Legendary | Random in the range 775-1030 | 1000 |
If someone sends you one merit that will not be shown until you receive another merit point.
As of now, there is nothing like -Merit or Demerit but I'm getting the feeling that to further improve the conditions, this will soon be implemented.
Keep in mind that this is to ensure that people will post high-quality stuff in order to get promoted. If you post garbage, it will be really tough to even get 1 Merit and you'll never be able to put up avatar, signature or even post images.
One benefit of this system is that we can now clearly identify the posts that are really useful and stop wasting the posts which are not that good. Of course, it will take some time especially here but believe me it will be beneficial for us all. Did I forget to tell that the posts will be highlighted with "Merit by" once people receive Merit along with the name of the sender and the amount he/she sends.
Hope this helps. Let us all create some quality posts from here on forward.
P.S. If you think this post is helpful, you can hit the button that says +Merit on the top left side of this post. 
Also, I too have some Merit that I can spend so you can start making some high-quality posts right here so that I can transfer my first Merit.
