Heh. A fine case of history repeating itself.

Things are the way they are, because in the past there used to be an all-time top 10 nodes, and the only practical result was that the nodes that scored a spot on that list just kept zooming ever higher in reputation, making it more and more difficult for new nodes to get a chance to squeeze in. The current technique of Selected best nodes is a good way for removing that bias.

So bringing a straight all-time-ever best is not going to happen. Although perhaps we want 100 nodes these days. When SBN was rolled out, the lowest-rated node had a reputation of 82. Since then, the threshold has risen by ten points, and it will continue to rise. Either that, or all nodes with a reputation of 75 or better get a chance.

Nonetheless, with all that said, apart from obfuscations, code nodes clearly score less reputation than nodes in other sections. It takes a lot more time to judge whether code is good as opposed to a point of view or piece of advice. I tend to vote ++ on all code, unless it is particularly crappy, as a small means of encouraging people to post code. Giving code nodes more visibility would be a good thing.

There was a discussion a long time ago about this. I thought at first that deprecated started the thread, but search as I may I cannot find it. If there is another historian who remembers, please let me know.

(ObRef: It's reputation, not XP).