This is somewhat poorly written, but I think I'll get my point across:
The Bnet community is a wild place, it has a lot of awesome people, some really awesome people, and a fair amount of trolls and grumps. What helped me a lot when I first joined were obvious titles. Simply by skimming a group of responses, I could see how the "cool kids" (AKA Mythics) behaved and what was deemed appropriate on this website. The titles I saw denoted good behavior and dedication, and my little nooblet heart wanted nothing more than to be like them.
I know this has been addressed, and that we will get a revamped title system with the release of Destiny. But something that concerns me is that next-to-name titles might depend on in-game actions. [b]I don't want a new member to take the advice of some douche who's simply good at videogames, when an obviously superior community member has nothing but the little year tag hidden away on their profile. [/b] Being able to imitate members like Hylebos and Spawn guaranteed I never landed a ban (short of that hilarious bug incident, lel).
So, in my own opinion, it is imperative that you bring back titles as our population grows (I mean bring them back BEFORE Destiny is released). This city needs symbols, blah blah, etc. And it is also important that in-game actions do not dictate superiority as a community member, as noobs will listen to whoever they perceive as being the highest ranking person in the room.
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We need a cross between the old system (basically what deej says below is "number of posts without being banned". And I'm being extremely simple in that quote.) and a new one. It is important to be active in the community to put up posts and participate but as we all know some of those posts are inane gibberish. But it's still important to note who's active. I wish I had a fresh take on a new system but don't take away the old one either. Some in game context would be great. Imagine if bungie put out some custom challenges that highlighted being a good community member. Stuff like "helping a person who's never done this quest before" or "saving a fellow guardian from peril". I think your take is only looking at competitive play in which case you are right. But don't forget about cooperative. If you remember back to the vid master challenges there were great community members who helped tons of people get many of those achievements for recon. There's definitely a way to tie in both.