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I wouldn’t say there is much of a problem on the Newbie rank segment currently, at least not in the broader audience boards. Yes, many Newbies are meritless, and for a reason. As @Pmalek points out, his thread has visibly, and yet, being on the Beginners & Help board, lacks a line of postulating candidates, and of those that do, barely any have really anything worthwhile meriting.
I would shift the focus more on the speed at which people rank on the forum, if that is a thing for them, since getting a few merits is easy, but getting them on a regular basis is not. The idea of getting an average of one merit per day for decent enough posters has only been achieved so far by 99 people on the forum (with a total of 300 or above earned merits). Even if you make that conceptual objective half a merit per day, the amount of people that are keeping-up with this ratio is of 282 (with 150 or above earned merits).