I don't understand or condone that mentality. Do you think Kitsu and myself help the site in the ways we do because we want the Admin rank? If so, why would we do things independently that don't need to happen (for example, when we created an ignore feature in the old chatbox). Why wouldn't we just do the bare minimum? Why did Kitsu help out before receiving the rank? People should do things because they want to help and receive the rank as a reward.
But either way, you can't deny that the clutter of ranks is not aesthetically pleasing. Sydney, I like your idea about the little badges. Kitsu and I looked into how this would look and in practice, it looks like it would look fine. I thought of having a big rank for Member, Mod, Admin and CC, and badges for everything else. What do you think about that idea?