No ranks, because they would either be meaningless, or would enable folks to boss each other around. Ranks are also considered by the non-military, as an inevitable climb to the top. Members are members, and people with extra jobs have positions.
To have a rank based on the amount of posts, encourages spam. Rank based on the number of suits of armor, would encourage lying. To stop the lying, it would require a way to officially monitor it.. which is ridiculous.. I could make a suit of armor, and spraypaint it a different color every week and claim it was a new one.. a montior of some sort would have the burden of proving that I was lying. I could also send-in pics from someone else's suit and there's very little chance I'd be caught doing it, unless a monitor went on a witchhunt, and somehow managed to detect the lie.
Also, would making a an accurate weapon increase someone's rank? What if it was pep, or molded.. would that make a difference? what if it was a recast (legal or otherwise)? What if it was a recast of something else you already did?
If there was a foolproof method of insuring proper rank increases, now you're left wondering if making armor makes you more able to lead people, or more able to teach people? Doing something yourself merely increases your personal knowledge.. it doesn't automatically make you a teacher, or automatically mean that your methods are the best ones out there.. or the safest.
It does nothing except potentially mislead people.
A member is a member is a member.. if you build up a reputation, your work, and your posts will speak for themselves.. no amount of sigs will do anything to affect that. If you're proud of your work, and want to include something in your sig to draw attention to it, then feel free, but beyond that, there's no point in it.
Some members have titles given to them, typically it reflects a group that they work with, as a an attempt was partially made to identify those folks who work with various studios. I'm not 100% sure, but I beleive at least most of them are personally known to Adam (therefore proving the affiliation to that group). Eventually, perhaps, the titles will be changed to reflect various positions, but I'm not sure of that.
It was already mentioned here, but it's worth repeating... Mod's and other "positions" within the club are indications of duties. Yes, some positions may hold an element of power, but only to enforce some part of the charter, and/or interpret it to the best of their ability. They, however, are answerable to you, each other, and to the site administrator.
For example, a Moderator's duty is to follow the rules that everyone else has to follow, and help ensure that if someone strays from following the rules in their posts, that they fix them, warn them, or remove them, to keep the forums in working order. As long as they do that in a reasonable way, they are able to edit, delete or move posts in-order to achieve that goal. If it were a real "power", a mod could go through and delete every post made by an individual, just because they felt like it, and edit their posts to say something like: "look at me, I'm an idiot". Yes, they CAN do that, but that'd certainly cause a situation where they'd no longer be a moderator, because they proved unable to support the rules of the forums. In fact, that type of abuse would probably cause the mod in question to get banned.
Ranks are for the military.. we're a costume club that does the military thing for show, because we're in military costumes.. The rank thing might exist as an optional roleplaying thing, but it's not something the club needs.
I'm referring to the Club, not the Forums.