I've wondered if it wouldn't be better to give relatively more weight to votes from people with high karma. I haven't proposed it because it seems counter-productive to escaping the dangers of an echo-chamber, and because it seems like a conflict of interest coming from someone with high karma.
The rule should be stateless: users vote, and it's data. Then, there's an algorithm that computes karma of users and rating of comments, starting from that data. Giving more weight to high-Karma users (adjusted for inadequate voting=significantly different from what others value, and for balance of votes) is similar to electing moderators, and ultimately roots in the founders' conception of what's on-topic, what's valued on this particular forum.
Our friends at Tricycle will push through a zero-based karma system (no self-voting possible) sometime this evening. At present this will only cover future posts/comments - they may go back and revise history some time in the indefinite future (or not), but apparently that would be overly complicated for now. We'll see how this works.