"Valve needs to reward frequent forum users better." - totally agree. It would be simply beneficial for Valve AND rewarding for players to have something like "impact factor" in science research (or "social credit score" if you like). The greater, meaningful and useful the user's contribution is ("points" granted by other community members through various ways), the brighter "missile alert" shines at Deadlock developer's screen when user post something with with a proper tag/ in meaningful forum.
It's simply a collective intelligence and should be used from the beginning of tests.