I’m saying Albert Einstein for instance. He is just is busy writing down his formulas and posting them, and doesn’t want to bother with anything else.
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Maybe Discourse is not the right tool for (this version) of Mr. Einstein. These things which you don’t like are meant to increase involvement and engagement in the site, making it not just a repository where one dumps bare information but rather a destination where a community can develop.
And in fact, not just “meant to”. Are generally quite good for, as shown by years of real-world use and refinement.
Are they perfect for everyone? Obviously not. But… I think on the balance these are good features. As noted, admins can turn off badges and the greeter bot — and even the trust level notification — if they want a more bare-bones experience.
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This gets me thinking, I bet there are still some things that users should be allowed to configure, not only admins.
Are you guys sure you’ve given the maximum amount of control to users that you could have?
Yes, as always, I’m talking about the default distribution to thousands of sites. Not any individual site.
No, not having ever been in admin myself, I’m not familiar with all the stuff admins can control. I just find occasionally some things that it makes sense to allow users to adjust, but they’re not allowed to get their hands on it.
Sure, you might say well I could just install a version and being admin on my one person system and explore it but. From the point of the minimal end user: “all I own is a cell phone.”
Anyway, on the other hand one wouldn’t want to make the interface too complicated.
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Anyway, older users sometimes “end up on systems.” And that’s the only place they’re going to be for the rest of their life. So we children would like to go in and sometimes adjust some things for them. But we’re not admins. This would be an example of where allowing users uses to turn those things off would be useful.
For instance, Grandma uses gmail. I tried to tell Grandma there’s a better program to use but let’s just say be thankful that she can even use Gmail. So I at least in Gmail I can go in and adjust some things to make it easier for her to use.
Anyway in Discourse we can adjust some things. But there’s a few more things that would be great to be able to adjust. Even if we’re not admins.
Let’s take Grandma again. None of the site trust levels would have any relevance to her. Telling her about them would only make it seem like she did something wrong and her account is going to get closed or something.
Sure I can say, “Grandma, just READ the message.”
But, well, try it on your own grandma and see.
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I think this is ridiculous.
Let’s imagine this scenario - here is a user with no discourse experience. He/She joins, browses, and the system sends a private message: “Hey! You’ve been promoted!”
This private message will only be sent once. Apparently you can’t be promoted to TL1 or 2 twice.
Therefore, when this user who has no experience in using discourse sees the button “Don’t send me a trust level promotion message”, this user should feel puzzled. No one has ever told him what a trust level is. And once sent, this button becomes useless.
So the only people who need to use this are users who have used several different discourse forums before. How many of these people are there? Is it necessary to develop a function for these people? If necessary, how much functionality should be packed into the discourse system?
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There well might be. And when someone puts a compelling case forward for adding them we do certainly consider it. 
Unfortunately in this case there does not seem to be a solid reason to add this as a user preference, and it makes more sense to leave it in the hands of the admin. Even if left as the default they serve a useful purpose, and even more so if the messages have been adapted to a particular site who may have changed what each TL can do.
I feel we are also drifting off-topic in some of the latest points you’ve raised and it feels like this subject has come to a natural close.
I shall mark this topic for closing.
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