I agree with moritz and kyle that seeing one's current title on posts made when one was an initiate is very misleading.

I would much prefer that all my posts by judged solely on their own merits (if any), rather than being seen through the lens of a title I achieved in large measure just by showing up and voting. I realize that there are still ways to obtain that information even if titles don't appear on each post, but at least those require some minimal effort on the part of the one who desires to know. I further realize that at least some people some of the time vote on nodes for reasons that have nothing to do with their worth - friendship, enmity, bad mood, heightened exuberance, dislike for someone's nick... or simply a desire to use all the votes up, and nothing pmdevils can implement will change this.

I personally hope these patches will be reverted, or at least be made "opt-in", but I don't necessarily expect that to happen. I am grateful to Tanktalus for showing me how to turn the display off for myself.

I also completely agree with Argel who says:

Showing levels is a bad idea because it promotes elitism. I think the XP system was just fine the way it was -- no additional encouragement was needed and it struck a nice balance between encouraging participation without encouraging too much elitism or someone "pulling rank". Having the title displayed in posts breaks that balance.

As a non-Christian I try not to get too exercised about the titles themselves, preferring to relegate them to just another part of the Monastery motif. But I do think too much 'in your face' stretches the 'friendly' part of the friendly competition that is the XP game.