dan, I'm sure your ideas are better than mine after all this time and experience, but here is my idea.

-1) let users decide who to reward like the article says:
-2) reputation points to give per month is 7% of one’s total
-3) you could start everyone with their current score^3 / 1000, or whatever

My >>personal<< formula for giving reputation would be:

• every time I vote, give 1% or divide points evenly from my monthly reputation points
• with two votes, give 4%; three votes give 7%; then plus 2% for ever additional vote
• for a Follow, count it like two votes
• reserve 15% to give to all who my recipients vote for, using the above.
• reserve 10% to give to all who my recipients vote for, using their personal formula.

Then my formula for viewing reputation is: over 99 units, do a bell curve. This means that those towards the middle are more spaced out numerically.

The only issue is things need to be cleaned out, giving sybil attack type accounts much lower reputation before beginning above process.