I think to implement this would be to cause a bevy of popularity voting.

Both you and ww made this basic statement, and maybe it's the sociologist in me, but the premise interests me. I'm still relatively new and haven't really paid too much attention to nodes that had anything to do with experience, except for this one. I guess I've missed out on the various arguments you and others have made in the past. Please correct me if I've got this wrong:

I see that others have voted a certain way on a node, so I'm supposed to feel like I should automatically vote for it, too? (Basically the herd mentality) I suppose I can see this possibility, on the other hand, I think it's equally possible that a node was upvoted because a number of individuals thought it had merit. The fact that it received positive recognition attracted others to the node, who might not normally have looked at it, and also determine for themselves that the node, and perhaps others responding to it were worthy enough of an upvote. This seems like a fairly natural effect - more a result of seeing what all the fuss is about than being a sheep. It's a difficult point to prove either way.

What amuses me is that my first inclination when I see a massively upvoted node is to try and determine for myself what's so great about it. I might even judge it far more critically than another less popular node, figuring that it must be really impressive if so many people voted on it. I might hold it to a higher standard.

Still, even if the premise is true, aren't there already ways in which this could happen on this site? For example, let's say for a given node, I see that there were a lot of responses, depending on whatever my personal definition of "a lot" is. I would guess that this attracts attention as surely as upvotes would. Also, don't the "best/worst nodes" encourage the same mentality?