I think we all enjoy seeing our name in lights, and the wtg's etc. its gratifying. I also think that the stats page helps with info to help you determine where you need to improve in your flying and for most of us that is what we use it for.
However, there is the "darkside" of all of this, thus it has created players to be fixated so much about there score or stats that it has created a very timid player, more and more players have determined that mitigating "any" risk will help improve their score, so you end up with players that are trying to get as many kills as they can with the minimal amount of risk and in the shortest amount of time = HI-Score.
The days of padding scores on shades are over, now they have to do it the old fashioned way, earn it, but you will always have those "gamers" that don't want to take the time to earn anything, they want it all for nothing.
As a community, we have to accept the good with the bad, but we don't have to accept gamers ruining everyone elses fun.
I don't know what it will take to correct that type of fixation, maybe getting rid of the scoring or ranking system?