I'm with Aristotle: calling attention to level promotes XP whoring and shifts focus from content to personal status. I'm actually not convinced that XP whoring is a bad thing^*, but I do think that shifting focus is.

In any case, if this suggestion were adopted, I'd much prefer a colored bullet next to the name rather than highlighting the name itself.

^* After all, the intent of the XP system is to encourage people to participate in a way that other people will respond favorably to. And that's exactly what XP whoring is. I guess it's bad when people take a shotgun approach to it and just spew as many posts out there as possible, hoping some of them will get upvoted.