So,why does a non-mod/admin have a custom rank?
This confuses my small forum newb brain.
Arche used to be a mod - in fact there are several old moderators kicking about who have custom titles.

I see your point on redundancy, but a lot of us here worked, and waited, patiently for those stars.
You can work and wait for forum ranks too so I don't see what the difference is there. Is there something more special about getting star five than the associative rank?
Personally I'd like to see the rank system revamped, have a bunch of ranks for the first thousand ranks made sense when it went up but since then they've really blurred today.