Do you dislike the current option of reply-depth filtering in user settings as well? Because I think it's a similar idea - Node Rep and Node Depth are both indications of the probable relevancy of the post...
Your point about the problem of getting around finding the rep of a node is what I was trying to address near the end of my post. I think my point was that you can already find out the rep of some nodes (via the nodes I mentioned, or by voting and sorting replies by node rep and doing the math, etc.) That's why I called Node Rep semi-secret.
I understand the point of hiding node rep to avoid a knee-jerk vote based on rep, by trying to encourage people to vote based on their own opinion and not other people's. If someone goes to the trouble of fiddling with their rep-filter to find out the rep of a node, I'm guessing we can trust them to vote responsibly...
The truth is, I think node rep should be less secret anyway. I know this has been discussed before, but I think you should be able to reveal the rep if you want to, without voting on it, since I don't understand the point of hiding it other than the knee-kerk reason. But that's a different discussion altogether (sort of).