The thing is, being on the Best Nodes list tends to be pretty self-feeding. That is, someone browses the best nodes and says "Wow, that was really cool! ++". Camel code is a truly incredible piece of work, but if it hadn't landed on Best Nodes, it would have faded into the background again as far as lots of extra votes are concerned.

Yet, it would be great to be able to find the true gems easily, and Best Nodes is the forum for that...

Maybe this is getting too complicated, but what if upvotes have less "value" as the score of a node starts to go through the roof? For instance upon reaching a Reputation of 50, an upvote might only have a 75% chance of increasing reputation. At 100, that drops to 50%, at 150 to 25%, at 200 to 20%, at 250 to 15%, at 300 to 10%. (Those are completely off the top of my head, of course.) The point is, then exposing the recent good nodes to more viewing in Best Nodes will contribute less to score inflation. Or maybe reputation inflation is not something to worry about...

I wouldn't mind seeing "Best Nodes of the Month" or "of the Year", or even a list of the "Best Node of the Month" for the past 12 months. But I don't mind the way the system is now, either.