I am a member of Bitcointalk from the last day of January which is exactly 3 months so I think this is a good time for the summary which will present a viewpoint of the new member of this forum. I have registered exactly when merit system was introduced so this topic caught my attention. I have read many merit threads and I realised one thing, that I have to write high-quality posts and give my best to achieve a higher rank in a reasonable time frame. From the beginning, I tried to write posts with minimum 100 letters in the text, wrote 30 posts (3 per week), never spammed, etc. I was quoted, people asked me questions, answered questions, tried to be helpful but still, I haven't received even one merit. I have seen in merit topic many times that high-rank members advise to newbies like me not to spam and write quality posts to get merits. My example shows clearly that this is not enough. I invite you to view my profile and evaluate my posts. I will accept criticism with understanding.
Most of your posts seem to be in Meta, Off Topic (and some cheesy "Bitcoin Discussion" topics), and Altcoin boards. I think Altcoin boards are quite lacking in merits compared to the amount of posts in them and I don't know if there is a good solution to that. I loathe visiting those boards because most of the content seems to be spammy or scammy. I also don't want to advise you to post in other boards because you should do that only if you have something to contribute, not to hunt for merits.
I merited this post as it seems to be a reasonable observation. Other than that I think you just need to keep reading, learning, don't think about merits and ranks and number of letters, post when you have something new and meaningful to say. There is no magic formula.
