Your kudos score is also used when you submit a new story. Get a high kudos score and you've just become a newshound.

Dumb. Whether or not someone has newshound status should depend on whether or not they publish good news stories that conform with the rules of posting. Why would you tie it to kudos score?

In the future, people with high kudos score will possibly get additional moderator-like privileges, like unbanning.

Even worse.