People are leveling up already...

You level up by posting; this is rather obvious, really. Each successive level requires a proportionately higher cumulative postcount to acquire. The lower levels are simple, as they require only a handful of posts each. Once you hit level 25 or so, however, it begins to plateau. Only the most dedicated members reach level 50 or higher.

However, posting for the sake of levelling up is tantamount to spam and will earn you a bad reputation that's hard to overcome.

(Incidentally, those who've managed to do this have gone on to become moderators, oddly. This shouldn't be an enticement to mass-posting though, since it takes a long time to reestablish oneself as a quality poster after being labelled a spammer.)

However, postcount is not a race. There was a period of six months or so in 2003 when this was hotly debated and the Top Ten Posters list had its public link removed to discourage post-racing amongst a few then-prominent members.

This subject is more appropriate for Board Support, so I'm moving it there.

Jam it back in, in the dark.