I think that users who have made the most contributions to the site should have more voting power, more rating power, etc. That way, they would be heard before people who had just signed up. Kind of like when people are in high school; when they're seniors, they get first dibs on electives they want, more sports/ clubs to join, basically every thing is about them until they move on (in this case, decide to leave the site) and the juniors are the next ones to have the majority of say.
As was discussed in this thread, the point was to give more oomph to users that contributed tons. However, when contemplating the future, I believe that the number of users that have tons of 'ower' will increase by handfuls. It can be thoroughly misused.
