How would you come to such a conclusion if you didn't have the data?
I didn't come to a conclusion yet, I just come up with this out of curiosity. Thanks for providing this useful data, my curiosity is now answered.
Obviously it was, and still is, much worse for newcomers to the forum. But to your second statement above, anyone can contribute whatever they want, whenever they want. That's not exclusive to Legendary members. Nobody needs to rank up. That's a requirement people put on themselves, usually because they want to maximize their campaign/bounty earnings.
If you just live on the forum and slowly increase your rank, it will come to you as quickly as possible.
"Any action gives rise to a reaction." Just let go of your observation of who and how many merits are received.
You shouldn't post solely for the merits in the first place. Merits should just be the cherry on top due to the quality of your posts, not necessarily the goal.
Also, while I really don't need merits per se, I'd like to maintain my fairly decent Activity:Merit ratio.
It is also possible to be Legendary from scratch with less Bitcoin knowledge, even with the current merit system (without airdropped merits). Such users exist.
if you perform in a good manner, there is no reason to be afraid of talking to Legendary members.
I for one do not see a reason to be particularly curious on how member's of a certain rank act or behave on the forum, that is too much of a chore imo. I'd rather say each user should contribue their own quota towards ensuring the forum is a decent enough place to communicate in, and thus if you find a shit post (from any rank/user) you report them, and you also make sure you aren't a shit poster yourself= great forum experience.
Regarding ranks and merit, only members below Legendary would still need merit to rank up where the required requirement was up to 1000. For the rest, you'll probably know that every merit they get is an award they receive for contribution and the quality of their useful posts. But I think you already understand that.
Definitely there are some users that received the merit airdrop, some are bounty hunters and they never had more merits again. Such people are poor posters.
Some received the airdrop, sell their accounts (and probably they have many). Who supposed to be a newbie bought it. I regard those and some other bounty hunters as newbie legendaries because of their newbie kind of posting.
The replies i have gotten so far have changed my initial thoughts. It is true that some people post to maximize their earnings. i was only expecting more from high-ranked members which shouldn't be so, everyone is good in different aspects of the forum and can contribute to the forum irrespective of rank or merits earned.