He did not get 700+ merit, only 258.
700+ merit is what I saw on his profile that he have as when I first saw this account
DEADSEA33 .
That's why I was surprised and how on earth did he get up to that amount of me with a lower rank.
Check properly you'd see that is 700+ merit unless we're not talking about same account here.
I am very much sure we are talking about the same account, UID #106374, profile as shown below:
or, if you consult to
his profile on BPIP and/or use
BPIP extension, of which gave a more comprehensive results, the profile will give you information like what my previous screenshot show, as below:
He does own 700+ merit, but he did not get all of them by earning merit [other members send merits to his account]. Only 258 are given by others [this data shown by "Earned Merit" field on BPIP. The other 500 are "airdropped" to his account. The forum "rewarded" existing members prior to the introduction of merit system by assigning merits that correspond to their current rank when the merit system being introduced.
For example, if someone is on Full Member rank when the system being introduced, they will not start at 0 merit. Instead, he'll begin with 100. Likewise, a Hero Member [like me] who has been around before the merit system being introduced, started with 500 merits. Thus, although my merit shows 1,132, the actual merit I earned is just 632. I got 500 bonus merit and 632 earned merit.
deadsea33 was at the same rank as me [Hero Member] when Merit System being introduced, thus he also got 500 bonus merit. But later on, he deleted most of his posts.
The ranking system in bitcointalk are influenced by "three" factors [previously only "two", with
merit being the recent addition]: post count, activity, and merit [actually post count did not calculated and considered toward ranking up, but as activity count is heavily influenced by post count, let's just say it's one of the factor].
When someone --let's say a Hero Member with 490 post count, 490 activity, and 510 merit-- deleted 50 of their post, their post count will became 440, and the activity count will decreased to 440 as well while their merit stays at 510, since activity count is tied to post count but merit are permanent [and can not be undone once sent]. This number did not met one of the Hero criteria [480 activity and 500 merit], thus he got demoted to the rank below it, Senior Member.
On deadsea33, he practically wiped clean his posts, effectively also reset his activity count and demoted him so far below, while his merit is still intact.
I hope this explanation helps you understand better the situation regarding deadsea33's merit.