"good nodes are ignored and not given the reputation they might deserve,"

He covered that possibility. Besides the solution to that is not to ignore node rep, rather to ++ all the good answers you see and encourage others to do likewise. Instead of saying the system doesn't work, work towards makeing it work. Features like this would encourage people to ++ better nodes so that they don't fall threw the cracks. Sure Node Rep means nothing now because you can't use it for anything. If you could use it, then its meaning would grow with time.