Yes....
4.5 months minimum to earn the requisite minimum 120 activity points to be eligible to become full member, if any newbie member stays active with on average of about 1 post per day, and if that member also earns 100 merits during such time.
It may take many newbie members longer than 4.5 months to earn 100 merits, because it takes a while for other members to get to know such newbie members, and members will tend to merit more quality and contributory posts and sometimes will not send merits until they have seen a few good posts from newbie members... and sometimes if new members engage with other members about the topic of their post, those responsive posts are helpful and the posts are largely adding value to the thread or at least to some members who are paying attention, then the newbie member become more likely to earn merits from the attention that they had gotten from other members.
Probably, to earn merits, frequently it will help if newbie members are actually interested in the topics about which they post. Of course, having interest in the topic is not a pre-requisite, but frequently if such newbie member is interested in the topic, then they are more likely to provide value that is based on their knowledge, experience and/or excitement that might be useful to some other members, which could possibly inspire some members to send the newbie member some smerits.
P.s. By the way, I personally tend to get turned off by any member (whether newbie or not) who refers to himself/herself in the royal "we." Perhaps it is a pet peeve of my own in terms of not inspiring me to want to send any smerits to such a poster who uses that style of posting, even if s/he or it considers himself/herself or itself as part of a team... .. Of course, there could be exceptions of accounts that are really considered accounts of an organization rather than a person, and maybe that would be in the description of the account being an organizational account, but that just seems a bit strange to me in terms of effective ways to interact with an account in this forum and miachang's use of we: "How we can add our avatar?"... could have been just a language/culture issue, but still kind of triggers me, personally, in a negative way.
