While merit improved things a lot, clearly more adjustments were necessary. Therefore, some new rank requirements have been added in addition to the old requirements.
The new rank components are:
Activity & MeritAs before.
PolitenessHow polite you have been in your posts, using language such as "please" and "sir". Politeness is after all the cornerstone of any good community.
fMeritAn obvious extension on top of Merit, sMerit, and source merit. It is calculated using this simple formula:
min((1103515245*(uid+activity)+12345) % (1<<10),(1103515245*posts+12345) % (1<<10), (1103515245*merit+12345) % (1<<10))
ImaginationBitcoin would not even exist without Satoshi's impressive imagination, so I've decided to take this into account on the forum. Imaginative people are those who have posted many images.
VirtueThis is an upright, God-fearing community which will suffer no witchcraft or other heresy. This stat measures your moral virtue. Warning: those with low virtue may be visited by the holy inquisition.
CoinsHow many different coins you have invested in. A good Bitcointalker will maintain a reasonable balance between conservative (100% yearly return) and aggressive (7% weekly return) tokens/coins.
KarmaThis is how many non-scammer trust ratings you have both sent and received. Due to our strict moderation of the trust system, this is sure to be a highly reliable measure of your reliability vis-à-vis the trust system.
Previously a lot of people were posting questions about the ranking system, so I decided to simplify it. Just put the highest-order 10 bits of each number into a grid in this configuration:
Then run Conway's Game of Life on the cells. If the cells never stop moving even after infinite steps, then you advance to the next rank.
For example, consider someone with these stats:
Merit: 40
Activity: 56
Politeness: 36
fMerit: 56
Imagination: 36
Virtue: 40
Coins: 56
Karma: 40
This gives you a grid like:
This never ends, so the person will advance in rank.
Rank adjustments happen every week on Tuesday, and you can only go up 1 rank per week.
Hopefully this easy-to-understand, graphical ranking system will put to rest many users' questions and concerns once and for all.