No. I'd like for them to remove the crown entirely - it's not needed at all. Whatever icon they choose will be sought after by players. So just NO.(and yes I have seen people get mentor status JUST for the crown...)

Give an option of being active or not to mentors - that would join them or not to the network - that way you don't get the annoying error message when 90% of the people in the network are actually just idling or even have it turned off.

If there is a mark that's needed ten maybe make it so that the crown is only visible to the sproutlings - or just colour those people a bit differently for them. I know it's nice to have graphical representations of it all but when players only do it for the icon and not for helping... Yeah sorry just no.