A huge network for a recruiter is not weak. That is his bread and butter. Often, a valuable interaction with a recruiter is very brief: he found you a job. Similar for people in Sales, Business development, Consultant, ...
The problem is that the connection feature in LinkedIn covers 2 vastly different use case. What is regular for you ( and me ), a network of people we have worked with and developed a relationship and that overlap your competences in some fashion and eventually become an implicit reference for what you put in your resume. What is regular for recruiter is a network of customer to which you have provided services. You will look at a recruiter connection to double check if he is indeed in contact with all the major investment banks as he pretend, not to double check he indeed worked at company X on project Y in the past.
The weighting should be almost the opposite for a recruiter. If he has worked 5 year in HR in a company 10 years ago, those connections are less interesting that the one he has made in his current position.
Problem is that all the use case are treated the same in linked in and most people mix and match different type of contacts in their connection.
