Nearly two years ago it was predicted that normal nodes would routinely be getting 300 votes "in one or two years" (by Ovid, I think? I searched, but unfortunately couldn't find anything), which would make the current rank levels meaningless and make reputations of nodes posted too long apart completely incomporable.

As you see, this hasn't come to pass.

There's two factors playing into this:

1. The number of votes given out per day never changed.
2. More users mean more posts.

Think about it.

Makeshifts last the longest.