I've seen an interesting effect in the Java tagged questions, which are the ones I browse more often - usually a good answer will get 5 upvotes, but I often see answer from user with high reputations getting much more than that, and a comparable good answer from someone that is starting now won't get as many upvotes.
This is just my unscientific impression. But was this noted by someone else? Do users with high reputations usually score high on their answers because these answers are always better, or because people tend to get those answers for granted because they come from users with high reputations?
If all of a sudden Jon Skeet created a fake profile to answer questions, would this profile get on average as many upvotes as he usually gets?