I agree with your overcompetitiveness reasoning, although I don't think it will have that big of an effect. In that event, could we at least be able to see them for ourselves, just so we at least know how we're doing? Now from my understanding, there are supposed to be dude icons that represent an "elo bracket." If so, that sounds like a suitable compromise. It gives us some measure of skill, without the nitpicking of exact elo. Could we get those dude icons on our user pages? Note: I am a Linux/Springlobby user, so I can't see the dude icons.
With regards to the screaming at newbies, I don't quite see where you're going and what elo has to do with it, unless you're referring to the overcompetitiveness aspect. In the case, it wouldn't prevent people from yelling at newbs when they're losing the game. Besides, we can already tell who is a newbie by looking at their number of chevrons.
I don't see how elo encourages smurfing, and I don't think I've seen a proper explanation of how it does exactly. If you can provide one, I will take it into consideration. At the time being my arguments against hiding elo to prevent smurfing are basically the same as some of those in that hidden elo announcement thread. (
http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/3754 )
Voteexiting, I don't see as a bad thing. If the game is severely unbalanced, of course the players would want to exit the game (at the beginning). This would be a problem fixed by modifying the balancer to even out the newbies.