It's pretty simple. There used to be a group on this forum called "The RuleMaker's Group", they were people selected by the rest of the forum to create a set of battle rules. When the idea of using posts counts was suggested, Versuvio originally argued that he didn't like the idea because it would cause people to just start spamming to get their ranks up. But it was agreed that it was fine for short term use as a ranking system until a system was put into place that in which mission completion and testing could be preformed to increase users ranks. The whole post count thing was never a final solution and was flawed by design. We knew it and we had no intention of using it. BUT, pein87 (a member of the RuleMaker's Group) became a moderator and basically decided he didn't care what the rest of the group said, and took the temporary rule system that was created and modified it into his "Official Battle Arena Rules". Since then, the rules have just been revisions of a flawed system.
If you want to talk a functional rule system, you can put into place a structured hierarchy. Select the senior-most users on the forum and choose maybe 7 of them that have a history of disagreeing with each other to act as the members of the group. These top members would be in charge of creating challenging tests and missions for each of the ranks. Each of these people should select 2 sensei, these people would be in charge of handing out the tests and missions. Every 10 weeks the senior members will need to re-select 2 new sensei to make things fair. And once a year new senior members should be selected. At least that's one of many possible solutions.
