We don't need or want to signal friendliness to absolutely everyone. We want to carefully choose what kind of filters and how many filters we apply to people who might be interested in our community. Every filter comes with a cost in that it reduces our growth, and must be justified through increasing the quality of our discussions. However, filter not at all, and you might as well just step out onto the street and talk to strangers.

Personally, I am all for filtering out the "punish for not putting modesty before facts" attitude. Both because I find it irritating, and because it drives away boastful awesome people, and I like substantiated boasting and the people who do it.

In other words, "Yeah, fuck 'em."

<shrug> So is admitting to being an atheist, for example. Optimizing for public relations is rarely a good move.