Just face the facts. Many of us will be stuck at our current rank for a long time, if not forever. Stop complaining about the merit system because life isn't fair. Otherwise, everyone would be rich.
I would think that most members should be able to rank up to member status (which is currently 10 merits as we should recognize) as long as they can draft intelligible posts. You have already received 4 merits, so you only have 6 merits to go in order to be able to rank up to member status. However, it does seem that the higher ranks may be a bit more challenging to achieve, and I suppose that was part of the intention behind the change in the system (in other words a feature rather than a bug), and yep, to get merit, members are going to need to attempt to create interesting and interactive posts in order to receive merit points from other members.
From newbie to member shouldn't be too hard. Member to Full member is also do-able but might take longer than people like. Beyond that, will take some serious ass kissing. Maybe even require to go on a date with Theymos.
I have no problem with frank talk; however, there is something else that is underlying your word choice that is likely interfering with your thinking about this matter.... you see you called it "ass kissing," and sure, I have as many problems as the next guy regarding hierarchy and even dislike for peeps who abuse their authority, rank or position... but you don't necessarily need to consider the whole matter as ass kissing in order to be able to think more positively about the matter, which is merely an attempt to be civil to other people and to back up what you are saying, and if you are challenging things, then have facts and logic that back up your points. Sometimes, even if some members do not like your facts and logic, other members may like what you say and decide to merit your post for any subjective reason, including that you might have caused them to think about a subject differently or that you were willing to say something that others would not say, so in the end, there are ways to get merits in this system, and furthermore, Theymos is not the ONLY one who gives out merits.
The ass kissing comment was a joke. Ass kissing or begging won't earn anyone merits. Theymos is the man of this forum. He implemented the merit system and I think it is here to stay. People just need to accept it. It may seem unfair for the new accounts since they didn't get any grandfathered merits but life isn't fair.
Of course exaggeration, or word choice can have a variety of effects, including serving as a means to joke, but there can also be other inferences, besides joking that causes an impression (whether intended or not).
It seems that this whole merit system was meant to be implemented in a fair way and to approximate a kind of fair transition and to address some spamming and account farming issues, yet hindsight can be 20/20 too, and allow for analysis of ways that "it could have been" implemented more fairly.
Nonetheless, having said all of that, there is always going to be reluctancies in going back and redoing an implementation such as this, so most realistic remedies would be tweaking of the already implemented system, if any, and there may also be a considerable reluctance to tweak anything prior to allowing it to play out for a few months to see how smerits are deployed by status quo holders of smerits, by sources and by members who receive new smerits through from other members.
