Thanks for the input. I agree, leave the font size alone.

"If anyone believes the node should not be displayed they can can consider it. Then the community will decide."

How do I use the power of consideration responsibly? states (among other things)

"Poor reasons to consider a node include:

• To correct factual errors. Instead, post a response or send a message to the original author."

It's often not pratcical in terms of time and effort to take someone to task, especially when time and time again the same nonsense gets regurgitated. Especially were there are some cases where, regardless how many times a user is corrected, the same nonsense is reposted. In some cases the content is so bad it could be harmful to a computer system, or ones career/sanity. Bad/dangerous advice on an electronics forum can see your post nuked completly.

Update: To expand on this, How do I use the power of consideration responsibly? there is nothing I can see applicable under "Good reasons to consider a node" which would allow removal of a node for the reasons under discussion.

Look, let's be frank here. When you say "when time and time again the same nonsense gets regurgitated" you're obviously talking about sundialsvc4. I agree with the overwhelming majority of Monks that the overwhelming majority of his posts are worthless at best. But I do not believe that they always, or even most of the time, cross into the realm of downvotes or reapage.

Mostly the fellow offers vague advice gleaned from a career in IT consulting that peaked about 30 years ago, and is thus often stale, as well as vague and possibly irrelevant. But that's different from offering specific answers that are wrong. He does this as well, on occasion, of course, and such posts should be countered with a reply correcting the misstatement. But what is the danger, really, of leaving intact his barely-related waffling? (In fact, a large portion of the time the advice is quite sound, albeit in a far too generalized sense to be of use to the thread's OP.)

I tend to think that seekers of Perl wisdom should be developing the ability to determine for themselves whether or not a particular piece of writing or answer is valuable. If such a seeker, presented with half a dozen concise, code-demonstrating answers to their question, and then a wordy, over-formatted, vague diatribe containing only advice of the most general nature, cannot distinguish between the two classes of reply, well, then I consider that the seeker deserves their fate.

All that said, however, I do believe, as I stated elsewhere, that vote totals should be displayed to all readers, when the vote total is high or low enough (based on some as yet unwritten and complicated formula). This -- along with a good deal of retarding use of the downvote on the part of some of those quick to turn to it -- would assist in what I think is our obligation vis-a-vis worthless posts by sundial or by anyone: to warn the unsuspecting reader when there is a real danger of being misled. Being bored or even baffled by the content does not rise to that level, IMO.



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

I now agree on the font size issue. I just wanted to pick up on one other thing:

Nodes are sometimes downvoted ... for bad cause

IMO the issue of why nodes get downvoted would be best for another discussion in another thread. In my view the central issue at hand is that we've got nodes with a significant negative reputation, i.e. the community has already spoken, but we don't have a way to inform newcomers and casual visitors of that fact. (And of course adding a CSS class for such nodes would also allow registered users to hide or format such nodes to their liking.)

Update: Fixed typo.

I do not intend that the reasons for down-voting should be debated here. However, in my view it *is* pertinent to consider the fact that nodes can be down-voted both in accordance with and not in accordance with the guidelines that are published. Unfortunately, those are not always followed and some posts accrue a slew of downvotes based on something else, such as, as mentioned earlier, antipathy towards the poster.

Therefore I am opposed to any automated system that would determine, in the absence of consideration by a human Monk, whether a post should or should not be displayed to viewers and/or search engines, based solely on down-votes cast.

update: added clarification



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

"any automated system that would determine whether a post should or should not be displayed to viewers and/or search engines, based solely on down-votes cast."

For completness, what you are proposing would seem to be a change in the existing consideration process, for example, current and new use cases:

• Reap: SPAM.
• Reap: troll.
• Reap: abuse.
• Edit: add code tags please.
• Edit: reparent to [id://xxxxxx].
• Hide content: A collection of poorly formatted buzzwords/Does not address OPs question/Is not an answer.