Wrong, some users joined the forum for their own interest, particularly focus on knowledge, discussions, etc. They don't care about rank. Over the time I have spent in the forum, by chance I have seen several Senior Member, Hero or Ledgendary even don't wear any signature codes. They don't care about that and ranking up process, too.
Recently, from second half of the year 2017 in particular, lots of newcomers joined the forum simply concentrate on getting free money from signature campaigns, bounties, airdrops, etc. I think that trend is due mainly to hot growth of crypto-ecosystem (Bitcoin and top altcoins for example in the last year). Side-effects of the movements is the forum now abundant with shitty posts, spammers, fudders, account farmers, etc. Merit system has solved and will solve the issuse. It's good for all users in the forum, generally.
I know you have to be here for a while and be active to move up in the ranks
You are likely too lazy to use search function of both Google and the forum. There are so many available topics about the same question as yours. You should search before creating new topics or new threads. After reading my thread, please spend a couple of minutes to look around following boards (Meta; Beginners & help), you can easily see that your question has answered repeatedly in many old topics and threads.
my question is..........
HOW DO YOU EARN MERITS HERE?
My recommendations for you to earn merits is be helpful, be creative, be eagerly to learn, be generous (to give your sMerits away when you have more sMerits in your account); keep doing those things daily, then merits will suddenly come to your account.
Good luck.
Best regards,
