I didn't read through this all, but the "rewards" idea could be made even simpler and useful IMO (only caught a few comments on this before typing this post).
Example... someone who puts 40+ hours a week behind the wheel of SONAR should get higher precedence in both
bug reporting and feature requests over those who have used SONAR for 15 minutes combined in the past 3 months.
This does not imply that they "go to the head of the line" and trump everyone else outright, but that their opinions and votes count for "more value" (2:1, 5:1, whatever...) Even a simple "hours logged" multiplier (with fudge factor to keep numbers reasonable) would be a wiser metric for sorting inputs/feedback (plus CW can specifically focus surveys to different groups to bucket "legacy woes" versus "new user hurdles" and such).
In this regard, it could highly sway (for the better) the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" syndrome that occurs often in here.
For transparency purposes, the above does not apply to me specifically, that ship has sailed.