The other day I got dropped into Wave 1 of an ongoing Gold game. By wave three, it was pretty clear my teammates were a bit..lost. We wiped on the objective (Escort), accept one dude who was hiding somewhere in the back lived a whole 30 seconds longer than teh rest of us.
Said guy then went on to start scolding the group, telling them how his righteous hiding abilities should have made it easy enough for us to get the job done. When we get back to the lobby, two things became apparent.
One, the highest rank in the group was about 160. Two, this elite player was rank 24, and quite pleased with himself. He made a big argument about how he had "Beaten" someone (me) ranked 4900 in a Gold match. Not on the scoreboard, mind, not by a longshot. He had beaten me and the rest of the team by being the last to die...and by an impressive 30 seconds or so.
I couldn't even begin to form a response to all the things I had just seen. I've carried low levels before, but to have one think that a co-op objective based multiplayer is somehow Deathmatch mode was something new altogether.
Easily the worst 'noob' experience I've had.
But on the flipside, I've had folks with ranks below 200 do excellent work on Gold. Some folks just seem to get the hang of things faster than others, so rank isn't an incredibly accurate indicator of where a player belongs (especially since some folks don't even bother with promotions).
I think folks should learn the ropes thoroughly in Bronze and Silver before moving up, just as I and a lot of people have, but I'm not surprised they don't. Loot is always a juicy motivator, and if you can get someone to carry you through Gold or even Platinum, you'll get it that much faster.
That's what the Kick option is for.