Back in the 4.0 brainstorm period, I had suggested putting little flag icons (famfamfam puts out a free set, so it wasn't much work) near users' names so that we could tell where a user was from (if they chose to divulge) at a glance. My rationale was that it can be an important context to have in certain discussions: politics, history, religion, etc. It didn't catch on, though they were added to our profile pages.

Now it seems, at least to me, that the Sift has continued to grow even more international and so I'm floating the idea again to see if it can get any traction. Here's a mockup: