According to some researches, I noticed bitcointalk has been a forum without merit system before, before merit system evolved which was in 2018, people only rank up only with activities but as time goes the forum deployed more ways to have more quality posts. Before merit system was created there were good posters but they are few if compared to now, which makes the merit system a very good part of bitcointalk by increasing users that have more quality posts. As at then when merit system has not been created, to rank up is not had but simple.
After the merit system was created in 2018, many members were not able to rank up again, the merit system was toug but not like of these days, the reason is because many members were automatically given smerits which they still use in inappropriate manners. Later some of these members were unable to continue the use of the smerit inappropriately later relented and later found not to have any merit again in the last 120 days and beyond and the merit system become more difficult as posts are becoming more quality.
People that are just joining bitcointalk have to work harder and have posts full of quality contents before they can rank up, making this forum not friendly to newbies because newbies are the ones that mostly plagiarize, spam, copy/paste and full of shitposting habits. This makes this forum to be harder than the era before merit system was implemented and the time when merit system just started.
The posting quality of even the ranked members have increased, while new members with good quality posts also are the one receiving merits. But many newbies think this forum ranked members are selfish and of which not, they are not selfish. But only the time they leave that thinking behind, read about bitcoin and crypto and make further researches and able to post about these in a quality way will they be merited and rank up.
Newbies should be hard working, patient and believe, these are the three keys to how they can rank up. The ranking difficulty has increased but there are still newbies that rank up while their merit is now enough to achieve more ranks.
Ranking up from a newbie is far easier than a member ranking up to a full member, I myself have ranked up over 6 difference newbies before because they are able to share something reasonable, do you know that newbies can ask good questions about crypto and get merited for even thinking about such question? Members hardly get merits in such ways, for example look at this question asked by a newbie and got merited by
ognasty, could have merit the guy but have no smerit again
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55972698