I recall from the initial website update that we had little help scores next to people's names on their forum profiles.

It seems this was removed, and assuming it wasn't for performance reasons, I can understand some of the rationale. You did initially have some people posting EVERYWHERE despite not entirely answering the question at hand, in an attempt to net points.

The concept I think of scoring people on their help is fine, and it's seen loosely through the "Best Helpers" thing currently.

What I'd like to do, as opposed to having plain removed scores from view, is improve upon them a bit.

Good helpers are not especially defined by their overall, all-time score. The "Best Helpers" bit acknowledges this, with a monthly top 5. However what it doesn't acknowledge (by simple score anyway) is good helpers are people who provide good answers, not just frequent answers.

So assuming this isn't done already, I'd like for score to be a reflection of +1's received / posts in help topics. This means a good helper is someone who consistently performs well - this is different to what the "Top Helpers" bit is displaying, somewhat, as that's about being active and being good also.

To aid OPs in deciding on good answers (we're assuming OPs are asking because they don't know a good answer, and probably don't know the people replying), I'd like this score to be displayed in the left-hand side of the topic by each user's name / icon somewhere.

The end scenario I'm imagining is a guy swinging into the developer help section with his problem. DarkCampainger posts and his score is apparent to the OP. I post and my score is apparent to the OP, and assuming the OP can't distinguish between the technical merit of our two posts, they can distinguish which answer might be better given mine and DarkCampainger's scores.

I don't generally feel this will put people off answering, in order to maintain good scores. After all, your good score isn't putting you in "Best Helpers", that's another calculation entirely. It's also not seen by anyone if you're just plain not posting, so you are showing off to no-one.

It also allows new helpers who are good to be recognised as such, as their score would be high, even if their posting frequency is not high yet.