On
www.foxforum.com the voting feature is a mis-implemented bobo. Its bogus. Voting on a "thread" is completely ridiculous. All this does is attract more entries to the thread, and thus it spiral downwards, depricating the one or two great messages that are increasingly buried therein. Don't take that as an example. It doesn't work.
Many great sites, including slashdot.org, have reputation-valued content. See also "Reputation Managers are happening" in the September Alertbox at
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990905.html.
Andre