Meaning it took me 109d 4h 59' 34" in order to reach the threshold for Sr. Member rank (and, respectively, I obtained this achievement with 56d 8h 45' 15" before the date when my activity would allow).
today at 17.24:21 I just reached the necessary merits for becoming a Hero, while I'm still a Full Member, having a merits vs activity ratio of 2.12.
As my first merit was received on Friday, Oct. 25th, 2019, at 11:55:50AM, it means it took me only 163d 5h 28' 31" to earn the Hero threshold, earlier with 240d 7h 8' 59" than the moment when my activity would allow me
On October 16th 2020, at 15:29:53 I received my 1000th merit (thanks nullius!), the threshold necessary for becoming Legendary member, while I'm still a Sr. Member.
I managed to obtain this achievement in less than a year since I received my first merit. So it's doable
It took me just
357d 3h 34' 03" to reach this milestone. Considering that I obtained my first 500 merits in 163 days, it took me an amount of time just a bit longer for obtaining the other 500 (~194 days).
My current merits vs. activity ratio is 2.60 while my merits vs. posts ratio is 0.70.
Therefore I'll repeat what I said in the OP and in another post inside this topic:
- practically, all you need in order to rank up is to be a honorable person and to wait. Honorable person means the following: to not spam, to not scam, to not plagiarize and post what you think is helpful here. To act as a normal person. And users will appreciate your work. They will give you merits if you post useful consideration and if you don't try to cheat the system. So merit barrier is not a real barrier at all if you act with good intentions.
Given the above mentioned details, I still believe that the rank-up should be a bit more difficult.
Now all I need to do to become Legenday per se is to obtain the required activity. Meaning the "
to wait" part. Of course, I won't resume to just waiting and posting low value post just for increasing my activity. I'm not that type. But obtaining the merit threshold for becoming Legendary still seems too easy. For being Legendary you need 775-1030 activity. I'll surpass the 775 activity on November 3rd, 2021 (I'll have 784 activity at that activity update) and I'll reach 1036 activity on the activity update from June 29th, 2022. So I earned my merits for being Legendary with 1 year and ~3 weeks earlier than reaching 775 activity and with 1 year and 8.5 months earlier than reaching 1030 activity (in case I'll be unlucky enough to get promoted after reaching the upper threshold of 1030 activity points).
Due to the above mentioned statistics, I want to encourage all honorable members to keep doing what they're doing and they'll be rewarded. Obtaining 1000 merits is not impossible and also not hard. Just act with decency, be respectful, share your wisdom and try to help the forum as much as you can, either that means to report posts, to flag scammers, spammers, plagiarists, to help newbies, to answer questions and so on. Bring your contributions on the areas where you have knowledge! And you'll see, ranking up won't see too hard!