Hey,
Some thoughts, in no particular order:
* Titles do not reflect ability, they reflect how titles are assigned in an organization * Some people see titles such as "software architect" as a stamp of superiority * Some people abuse their titles * We would indeed be advised to keep the distinction between WMF and MediaWiki in mind * MediaWiki is not a shining beacon of good architecture. I'd argue it should mostly be considered as a big blob of generally badly designed legacy code * Length of participation in a community, or the number of contributions, does not linearly relate to ability * Having a community process to decide who gets $fancyTitle, seems more likely to result in the most popular people of the strongest subgroups to get it then the most qualified ones. Same as what happens in politics.
Cheers
-- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. ~=[,,_,,]:3 --