That's an interesting point, Pine. Wikimedia Brasil a couple of years ago launched a Grand Prix, whose intention was make groups of users improve articles' content. Things wiki-branded were used as awards. I think that is positive but not timely effective, from community's view.
Stackoverflow's model is a good example from crowdsource world, where every user has a reputation based on his/her answers, community interaction and so on. The idea is amazing as the results. More info here: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/7237/how-does-reputation-work It's an structural and long term effort -- let's do more of those!