Background
In common with many monks on the site, I like to see the XP rolling in, and certainly like it less when points are deducted. I think that's pretty normal.
Now a lot of guys are going to go up through the levels of PM pretty rapidly and because of heavy programming backgrounds are going to look and feel the part in the giddy levels they are likely to attain. However I'm surely not alone of all the monks that I don't have a programming background - I discovered Perl through web related issues - and from a confused and frightened start I am now able to look at a number scripts and understand what is going on (though I still see many that are pretty scary!!). So I would dub myself as a perl hobbyist rather than professional.
The idea...
So my idea is to have an area of self-assessment on the site where we could go and look at the kind of knowledge of perl that the various levels of XP would indicate. This knowledge could be posted by the monks themselves and could be either trawled from the archives and new material posted with a view to demonstrating the sort of question a novice might be expected to know right up through the ranks to exalted sainthood. You simply go into the self-assessment area, click on the link for the XP level and the information is waiting. If information is deemed to have been included at the wrong level, monks can comment on it until the right level is found. It can thus over time be pretty representative of the feelings that the monks themselves have about the knowledge level that a certain XP represents.
The other part of the idea is that in our user settings, for example, we have the opportunity if we wish to select a level for ourselves that we wish to maintain. This would be completely voluntary and would only allow those with adequate XP points to override the system to keep their level down, not for those to choose a higher level without earning the XP points. So in my case I could go into the self-assessment area armed with my 900 odd XP points, and decide that my knowledge level is that of a friar (well, okay, monk), go to my user settings and select monk. I would continue to earn XP in the usual way but my user setting would overide that XP and I would remain at level 'monk' until I chose to change it, or use the default setting which is the current status quo.
I humbly share this idea with my fellow monks in the knowledge that I would find it useful and worthwhile were it implemented, and hope that all who read this shall look kindly upon it!
And in the meantime please look kindly upon my responses in PM, for my currently knowledge currently trails my XP by several degrees!! :)