I see all the points you are making here blamph and I understand it from a person who ISN'T ranked high on the leaderboards, but being someone ranked high, I still don't like the fact of all my work going for something as small as a medal and some sort of display showing what I had done. I want to keep building on from what I am currently doing. I want to make a push for the top 5 or top 3.
Does this mean I don't want some of the things you mention? No, not at all. I actually have always been a huge fan of daily/weekly and yearly leaderboards. This sort of things would really satisfy a lot of players who are just too far behind on the leaderboards to catch up to the top players.
If you think about it blamph, in reality, if the leaderboards were to reset, being in that top spot would still be crazy hard to get. You have any idea how many people would be no lifing trying to get that top spot? Getting the top spot would require 10+ hours everyday for awhile with the way some people play. Trust me I know, because I no lifed to get myself into the top 10 when I started playing.
The way I see it, is if you want to satisfy both sides, keep the current leaderboards but also have a "new" leaderboards. Everyone starts out from zero and stats are kept the same, but not only do your wins count torwards your "new" leaderboards, let it also count to the old leaderboards so us veterans of the community don't get ticked because all our stats are pretty much reset and taken down to 0. Having 2 seperate leaderboards just makes it to where people have something to aim for. They can be the top of the new leaderboards and maybe that will propel them to the top of the oldschool ones.