[Badmonster]

Take this with a grain of salt. I'm not sure if I should get a vote. After 15 years away from BBO and bridge in general I'm up to a grand total of two hours a week, with a set partner, against robots.

Here's the thing. Apparently, some people have a weird reaction to cards. It turns them into big rude jerks. It's so bad that I prefer to play against robots because they don't belittle each other or type at each other in all caps. People are nuts!
This is true, playing for zero stakes and the ability to politely excuse themselves. If they start obsessing about their ratings I'm afraid of the bridge playing population being wiped out by spontaneous human combustion and exploding craniums.

[OopsDarnIt]

This is a long, long dead thread, but I can't resist. So what if nobody reads it.

When I was playing in my 20s and 30s, the ACBLs system annoyed me. It "rated" players based on a function of quantity of play, ability and hiring of pros. A young player could get a reputation, but not a rating.

In chess, an 8-year old can become a grandmaster. Having a quality-of-play rating system makes the game more attractive to younger players. I know other young players in the 1990s were expressing frustration with the lack of a quality rating system.

As far as privacy, you can break it down into flights. I was a Flight C chess player at age 17-18, and didn't stop because of a lack of success, it was because I went to college in a town without a chess club. When I dropped out of bridge for 20 years for my career it wasn't because of rating, though it is only life master. If you want to experiment, permit an opt-in or opt-out and the ability to mask if you start a rating and don't like it. Then people can choose to play with those who hide their ratings or not.