I was out of town all weekend so I missed the big hubbub about ranks/post counts, but I did talk with Tom on ICQ for a few minutes last night. Here's my outlook:

I think there should be three titles that are displayed in a similar manner to the old titles: Newbie, Member, and Moderator. Newbie should be there so that we can know someone is new to the board when they ask common questions. I'm much more apt to help someone who's new than I am to answer questions for an established member who's too lazy to read the FAQ. The Moderator title is necessary because the mods try to keep some semblence of order around here, and if someone's being an idiot, they should know that the moderator is there to take care of it.

Otherwise, I don't see a reason for any kind of distinction based on post count. It's a very irrelevant statistic. So I'd like everyone to just be "members" other than the mods and the new guys. I would, however, be in favor of having the "registered on" date somewhere on the header/sidebar.

This is similar to how I ran my dialup BBS back in the day. You had your newbies, your members, and your sysops. No arbitrary designations within these groups, and no post count prominently displayed.

I think this balances the need to have some info about a user's experience on the BBS with the desire to avoid arbitrary and sometimes counterproductive "ranks" for regular members.