As I understand it a leader gets a defence boost from their members, and the higher ranked their members, the higher the defence boost. While I understand the logic, I believe it has (in part) led to the decline in the meaningfulness of the ranks themselves.

It makes sense from a points/stats position for a CL to promote everyone as soon as possible, they get stronger as a result...

The knock on effect of this, has been that almost all CLs now promote all but the most obvious retards without even thinking about it. Perhaps I'm just an old git whining about the way things used to be, but in my history I've been held back several times for simply not making enough effort in the streets, or for being borderline disrespectful while debating some topic of the day, or simply because my boss didn't know me well enough.

This simply never happens any more.

I suspect if the D boost that comes with members ranks were removed then the CLs would be more likely to actually consider the people they are promoting on merit rather than on the fact they have the points, and the CL is stronger with them as Made + than as Wise Guys.

The financial issues are resolved with the drug units being available at all ranks as they are now.

This simply never happens any more.

A blantent false statement.

I personally have held, and will continue to hold, back many great members, and very good friends, for many reasons. Be it lack of posts, lack of threads, lack of tributes/donations.. to name but a few. I know for a fact that many of the leaders now working under me do the exact same thing.

Some of us still view the rank of made man as the holy grail in terms of MR. Despite the fact that it has a small negative impact in the short term, the long term gains in terms of members working harder and actually having a genuine pride and sense of achievment on reaching it bring far greater rewards.

While it is an issue that some leaders might/do hand out ranks like confetti, please don't cast the same brush over those of us who have respect for ranks and go out of our way to try and train that into those that work for us. If a leader is the sort to just toss it out, the negatives of having a high ranking member not deserving of the rank will do far more negative to them and their family than the small positives they gain in terms of stats.

I personally have held, and will continue to hold, back many great members, and very good friends, for many reasons.

He's talking about you, SpaceMountain.

Though Deimne that may be true in your case, which i would have to agree is the right way to do it, some Crew Leaders do just promote you when your button comes up, i have seen people who have just gone through the streets, on the first 15 they could find, and just written "nice story" and then just written a thread in OOC, or just written something very small and to be honest, not the best, not really any type of formatting, and yet people like this still get promoted for having the 15 posts and 1 original thread.

I personally like the way that it happens in Detroit, it is done by getting many peoples respect, and getting about 2 people to write in a recommendation letter, and then on top of that, you also have to talk to your CL, and also i don't know whether they still do this, but they used to send a member of the Godfather/mother's crew to talk to you, and then they recommend you to your Crew Leader, this truly shows the CL that they should be ranked up.

So to go back to this statement.

This simply never happens any more.

I would just say that it does happen most of the time, but not in every case, and the people that do will be the ones who do have the better Made Men+ and then overall be a better crew.

How do you know it happens most of the time? Do you see everyone's tributes? Do you see their kill records? Do you keep up with their street presence?

Not likely since you would have to keep tabs on around 350 active people.