Do you want 5 good hearted people who share and expect nothing meaningful in return for their hardwork? Or do you want an army of people who do it for colors and the chance of this community thriving?
As this is in the end what we have been doing for the last five years: yes
This is my only problem with this whole situation (minus the ugliness of the current blue): I have no idea wtf direction Modcraft is trying to go in?
One minute there is a post about encouraging people to write guides to attract audience and help out the new guys. The next you make it harder to distinguish between new and old or even if new people are around and active. Nor is there context about how this is integrated positively in the future, as if there was a plan more so than just lowering arrogance.
As far as I can tell, no one has commented on the index page, no one has mentioned that despite it being the most viewed page on the website (presumably), it is presented with a bunch of people replying to people. There are no badges, there are no titles, there is nothing but an average Joe, replying to an average Joe. Some new people will see that as less threatening, but a good deal more who have looked at numerous modding sites will assume it's leeches sucking on a dead corpse.
There is no context for a new person, they see what they see and their retention is generally based off that alone. They are not going to see a topic announcing everyone is equal here. They are going to see a board index, with what they will assume is filled with leeches.
Again, I would be fine with this whole thing if I knew that there was purpose behind it besides reducing dick tugging and morality. If I knew this would be integrated in some form of positive manner.
To top it off, everyone is so fucking negative. Stop replying to "The badges show skill" with "No they don't, they are too inaccurate for that". You are still discussing a topic being beaten to death, yet you in your negative response just opened and refused to humor the more positive approach written. If you have a problem with their accuracy why are you not striving to make more accurate and less arbitrary titles? Or for the love of god at least discussing it.
Why are we not discussing the future of this (on both fronts), I could write a program tonight that deletes system32 and release it in a week under a new account, new people would be none the wiser. What is the solution to that? Is there a plan to how tools will be regulated (and how newbies will know to trust it) and if not, why aren't we discussing that instead of this bullshit ego/no ego battle.
What I am trying to say is, there is no out-liner for this particular change, nor does it make any sense to be released pre-website change. Or at the very least, when the websites changes addressed in "Modcraft community" thread start occurring, how will issues like these be addressed then. I don't give two shits about whether "such and such" does or does not like peoples names having colors, I want to talk about whether the colors are good for Modcraft as a website, or better yet Modcraft as a future iteration of a website.
All of this for the sake of ego, be it the perspective of not liking the ego the titles bring, or the perspective of comfort of the ego in the titles. When realistically we are using screen names which are by nature a personification anyway...
As mentioned, I hate negative replies with 0 constructive input, so here is a suggestion:
I am unsure as to how many people came up with and discussed this change before it was put in place. But it clearly has flaws that were not discussed and planned for. Nor was the manner in which it was released and brought to everyone handled very well either.
What I propose is a small hidden forum (consisting of staff and a few more people) in which these can be discussed and fleshed out before being released including how to handle this publicly (A.K.A adding context to the future of this). Blizzard doesn't just have 3 management members go: Here's the patch changes, release it. They have a board of people discuss it after a series of specific people come up with the idea.