Oscarus

I’ll be honest: a large part of me wants to answer some cliché comment about “back in my days…” or “some of us have lives…”.
 

Both would be blatant lies, on my part at least. I’ve (out of procrastination curiosity after seeing your update) glanced at the leaderboard.
 

As far as I can tell, there aren’t that many ways to get enough reputation points in a day (like, a scarcity reputation economy?) – also, that the bar is high to get a like. I feel that it’s most about standing out in a good way to sufficiently many people. 
 

Yet many people mostly lurk, only show up on Discord, or focus on subthreads that get few reactions (team advice, trades, bug fixing?).  

I see five ways to manage it: niche, charm, numbers, luck and cooperation. 
 

“Niche” refers to highly appreciated content that only you (not you, Oscarus, you, a generic forum member) and a few people can deliver: basically the dev blogs, other official announcements, some art threads, perhaps some popular playthroughs? 
 

By “Charm”, I mean the ability to stand out (somewhat) outside of a niche. If you write a striking (memetic? insightful? merely funny? unexpected? whatever goes!) comment in the E19 hype thread, for instance, and then get a significant reward. Creating your own niche should also count, too. 
 

“Numbers” is when you get a like per post, but you can make many such posts in a day.
 

“Luck” is when… well, you’re getting more likes than you usually do, and nobody else is occupying the field. 
 

“Cooperation” is when you agree with other people to boost one another. I don’t know if there’s a rule about it or if no one cares enough to abuse it. But I expect there are milder forms of cooperation. After all, you need an audience if you build a niche.  
 

So, niches are few, there are too many people for luck to count much, cooperation is small scale only (and sort of “cheating”), and both charm and numbers require a measure of innate talent and dedication.
 

If the fun isn’t in the reward, why focus on that? 

And I thought I was the one to give expanded answers to simple questions. 

Doesn't mean I disagree. I do agree. It is fun - it gives some boost to morale. 

But still... It's rather unbelievable.