Reason for showing course progress publicly?

I see that everyone can see everyone else's overall course progress, not just Admins.

What's the reasoning for making this public?

One reason I came up with is that it helps members to immediately see where someone is at. If someone shows 80% overall course progress, maybe they've been around longer and know a thing or two, and if they have 5% overall course progress, maybe they're a newbie to the program, and so on.

But I also imagine this would upset some users, or embarrass them (which may be a good thing? LOL)

That said, maybe there's another way to indicate the aforementioned things without exposing their actual course progress % (like a badge in their profile based on overall course progress, but not the explicit %)?

Just a thought.

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