People only gain an elevated status for ranting if they get kudos for it and you can't control who awards kudos to random rants. If someone is ranting often without providing any help they can be reported to the moderators and action can be taken. Several times in the past protest kudos and users have been removed.
Some users also gain rank by spamming answers such as "ask nokia" or answering for the sake of it or just posting stuff that doesn't make sense. There's plenty of sage's, prof's and even guru's that don't deserve to hold any rank as their advice is often flawed or incoherent.
On the upside there's plenty of users here of any rank that deserve their rank and kudos. These users (such as myself) balance out the trash and provide genuine help. If a user gets them mixed up with nokia's employees thats their problem, not ours as employees are clearly marked.
You will gain more stars as you move through the rank but only if you have sufficient kudos. I reckon you'll next gain a star between 2,500-3,000 posts.
I don't beleive it's possible to gain more stars without making the required number of posts so there's no shortcuts to gaining more stars. Some users gain stars and rank quickly by spamming simple one line answers (or post absolute garbage), they may get the rank but they don't get the respect.
Don't forget that kudos and accepted solutions also play a part. Each level needs not only an amount of posts but also a certain proportion of kudos and/or soluitions.
The way the system works underneath it all is that we actually have several sets of seemingly identical ranks, for example there are three separate 'Guru' ranks with one, two and three stars resepctively. It is theoretically possible for somebody moving up from Visionary to Guru and straight away with more than one star.
The stars within the same rank are dependent on the kudos + accepted solutions that you've written. It's the same post count for all star levels within the same rank.
So if you have enough posts for the 1st star, you just need a bit more kudos + AS to get more stars, and not necessarily any more posts.
As I've said before, the stars are just for fun so I hope nobody takes them *too* seriously.
