You know, if we did implement some award system, you could have equivalent awards for people in different rank ranges.
That way there's no post count advantage. You wouldn't want as many divisions as there are ranks - maybe gather all the folks with 1-499 posts into one group, all the people from 500-999 in another, then 1000-1999, then 2000-3999, then 4000+
You'd then have exactly the same sort of awards for each category.
Or am I taking this a might too serious? :-D
You could still have special awards for various things applicable to all of the users, such as "best disinherited demi geordie by the handle karlos" and so on :-D