Hate to say it, but I kinda see Crim's point. While Kay your ideas are good on paper, when executed it'll be a mess to handle.
Unless we have GMs who's job is to just do thread reviews, I don't think it's going to work. Even then it's not going to work because we're all human. For now Level=rank seems to be the best option until we can think of something else.
I deem this discussion open, but for the sake of RP starting, getting the ball rolling etc: Level = Rank is the way we're going to do it.