Buying merit or normal ranks is like buying yourself a bunch of trophies to put on your shelf. It's stupid, and it's an insult to everyone who achieved it legitimately. I can't see ever doing that. I don't particularly mind letting people pay for some of the privileges of these things, such as with copper membership, but it should be a parallel system.
Copper membership is good. Now, if you want to participate in signature campaigns, you can either pay the $10-$20 for copper membership or accomplish the herculean task of making one good post. I don't think that it's unreasonable in either case.
If people are making good posts but are still struggling to get merit, then that's a problem with the merit system and should be fixed on my end. Demanding money in order to bypass a broken system would be really bad. But AFAICT the merit system actually is reasonably effective at identifying good posters.
This is really not cool.Why only newbies and Jr Members has to suffer each and every time? So before merit system people who are legendary right now, got into that position by their quality of post ? No right? They might have spammed too to get into member,Hero member and legendary.So why no action on them ?
Moreover being a newbie or Jr Member if someone post a constructively no one bats an eye here to give merit.But being a hero member or legendary member when someone posts everyone loses their mind and someone gonna merit it.Sad truth.I am just saying the reality of Bitcointalk right now,just posting on behalf of all my fellow Newbies and Jr Members.Hope the justice is served.
Last thing let's start with a polling mechanism here before you guys take any random decisions like this and ask participants to adhere on it,if bitcoin is decentralized why not Bitcointalk ?