I was surprised to become a journeyer already, after only two journeyers certed me as a journeyer, and one of the "seed" trusted masters certed me as an apprentice. Not that I dispute it; I maintain three open source projects now and have published / contributed to others in the past. Still, it does seem generous, so I looked around at some other accounts to get an idea of how it works overall.
What I found is that it's generous for everybody. If the goal is to encourage activity within the community, i.e. if mod_virgule "feeds" on this activity, then it is in mod_virgule's interest to stroke a person with a nice inflated cert. That's fine - as long as we take it for what it is and keep it real.
I will give another example besides myself, because sometimes ya gotta stir the sh*te. I see bytesplit has recieved about a dozen apprentice certs and two journeyer certs - one of which is a self-certification; the other of which is by someone bytesplit certified as a master. I assume the self-certification doesn't count. (The other person, whytheluckystiff, is certified by many as a journeyer. Although I don't know him, that looks about right.) So as far as I can tell, based solely on whythelucystiff's vote, bytesplit gained journeyer status.
I am not going to come down on bytesplit. He just came to my attention because he makes the headlines a lot. In fact, I'm tempted to cert him as an apprentice. Outwardly, he does appear to have an interest in becoming a good programmer, and also when he comments on an article, it is usually a positive contribution. His diary paints a different picture though. bytesplit, I don't know whether this is a game to you or whether it comes from genuine interest in open source; either way, if you present the same image in your diary as you present elsewhere, you'll be more successful.
One more example, although I don't remember who it was: last week I saw a diary entry that said "I'm no longer an active participant in the open source community, and have not been in 18 months. Please re-think your ratings with this in mind." Perhaps there should be a way to decline a certification vote which you think you haven't earned?
freshmeat has restored the comment that I mentioned, in which I talked about how I hoped to extend this software on Unix. I didn't ask them to restore it. Perhaps its temporary disappearance was due to a technical glitch rather than an overzealous editor. Anyway freshmeat, you are helping me reach my audience, and you're doing it for free. Thanks.