I notice a shield just appeared for me :-(
I'd personally prefer not to have them...
Or that if people really like them they request to have them rather than them appearing by default.
It would be nice if we could choose not to view them (the way I choose not to view signatures currently).
But then I'm not even a fan of the number of posts being tracked and titles being allocated.

I guess I think it draws attention to differences that... Really don't matter to me. I prefer to take people on their merits rather than sorting people into the 'new people' vs 'people who have been here for a long time' boxes.

But maybe this is coming from my experience with personal messages where people have PM'd me in the past saying 'I want to you do x and if you don't do x I'll make sure you get into trouble here. The mods listen to me because I've been here for so long'. I guess I like to think that WHAT is said is taken on its merits rather than merits being a function of little 'status' indicators that aren't (to my mind) based on anything meritworthy...