I read the whole discussion with interest as both those who didn't like your proposal and those who did have good arguments and I'm halg-hearted about this matter. Of course both for technical reasons and for preconception risks outlined by others I most definitely wouldn't turn on such a thing by default.

As far as my personal opinion goes, despite Aristotle's remark I'm convinced that "using a user’s rank to judge him or his post" is not deemed to be such a negative thing; provided that you substitute "to judge" with "to help judging", which is more reasonable and IMHO more probable to actually happen.

More in detail, if I read a post from Dr. Fred Mbogo claiming something that seems to be utterly stupid or that in any way would make me feel like bashing him, chances are that I'm actually right. If a similar controversial issue is brought up by, say, merlyn, then I would be very careful since I would know for certain and a priori that chances are that it was me the one who misunderstood the matter...

Whatever, the rationale is that since users already have the possibility of accessing ranking info about other users' ranking in a not too difficult way, it would do no harm to make it even easier; at one's will, of course...

Said this, when I first read the proposal, I thought: oh no, not a different colour for each damned^Wholy level. I would choose either just two or three bands of colors or a whole continuous shade (which is certainly possible with 28 levels, as we have now!), so as to give only a rough indication and not a sharp one. But of course this is possible with demerphq's new css classes which in turn are lightweight enough, and not disruptive of the previous order that IMO it would be a pity not to have them on nodes too; for consistency at least, if it were not for anything else!