but we don't want to "punish" people who have achieved good ratings, or necessarily "help" those who have achieved bad ones. There are a fair number of posters out there who really should be sub default and just don't seem to get the message. the thiefx / varruswords of the world, for instance.
It's supposed to be dead easy to get scholar, but we don't want to give it away right from the start because then it doesn't feel like an achievement and a privilage when you get it. Sage is supposed to be Very Hard to achieve. Guru is supposed to be next to impossible. Truth be told, we probably have too many sages and gurus. But if we were to just start causing their rating to attrition over tiome, some of them would get annoyed about it and leave. and those tend to be your long term mainstay posters.