I fall into the XP does not mean much camp so voting is not as much of an issue for me. If I run out; I run out. If the post was really "worth" something, I just make a note to remind me to vote on it.

Other than that, not much.

The best way is to not vote that way you will always have the maximum possible number of votes for your level, unless of course you are the scapegoat.

Any takers for starting a Perl Monks 12 Step program to help Monks give up their voting habits? <grin>

--
Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Eh. So vote when you feel moved to and don't otherwise. You'll get more as you are promoted and you'll still run out occasionally.

> You'll get more as you are promoted and you'll still run out occasionally.

I agree with this. The main thing is just to be patient. It isn't long (if you're diligent) until you have more votes than you can use each day unless you spend most of your day on the site.

But definitely don't be discouraged by the "XP don't mean $4!t" folks. Some of us post, and some of us vote, and some of us do both. For myself, I don't have time every day to create a well-considered post. This one will take about 5-15 minutes, and sometimes a good post might take 45 minutes to an hour. I don't always have that sort of time to invest here.

On the other hand, the voting system incents me to drop in regularly and participate in the site by rewarding good posts with my up vote. That is not only a valid form of participation, but it also increases the value of the site in a way that is both subtle (considering the number of people who overlook, or loudly decry the value of the activity) and somewhat unique.

Search engines only do part of the job of classifying information seen on the web. It is the interaction of interested human beings that further classifies and organizes the information into useful forms. At (what is no longer) the leading edge of research into this field, the behavior of the observers of the web becomes part of the content and determines some of its organization.

Almost everyone who participates here sees this site differently, and sees different parts of it. Some days I read from the Monastary Gates, some times I read from the Newest Posts page, and sometimes I just find someone who has said something interesting and follow their home node to the archive of their past posts. Someone else may choose one day to visit nodes on the basis of their stature. It all works, and part of what makes that true is the critical mass we have for a population, and the consistent participation by many folks.

So keep voting, be patient and you will soon have more votes, and if you make "Saint" simply by voting, then you have contributed something useful to the community here. (While it is possible to "cheat" the system, such cheaters stand out among their "peers," and that in no way renders the exercise meaningless. It simply shows that the status can be reached artificially. Most of us can easily tell the difference.)

...All the world looks like -well- all the world, when your hammer is Perl.
---v

But I guess, as long as you can make saint by just voting, it remains attractive to vote.

Abigail

Awwww - come on now...if you logged in every day and cast your maximum number of votes, my back-of-an-envelope estimation is nearly 18 months before reaching sainthood. If you're that dedicated, you deserve it anyway - you'll have read a lot of posts and learnt a lot about how the community works.

I cast my allocated votes whenever I'm here because I always feel there are more than enough new posts worth voting upon (and old ones I missed). Even if I personally don't agree with a point / solution, I'm still aware of its validity, and applaud the poster for simply making the effort. I strongly feel that this community is more biased toward the altruistic, rather than simply being an XP fest - I mean, who in the real world *cares* about your sainthood? Maybe I'm being naieve, but it seems to me that most people here contribute in order to help / grow, rather than to influence the standing of their nick.

As to the original question, I tend to see my votes as my $0.00000002 - you vote on what you see - if you miss voting on something 'good', it'll reach its deserved reputation anyway from the other however-many-thousand votes cast that day, so don't sweat :)

Cheers,
Ben

Well, there's at least one saint with less than 10 posts. Now, that would mean an average of over 300 xp per posting. But, if you care to waste a few votes, you'll see the average is more around 5 xp/post.

Now, were did the other points come from? ;-) If you look at the lists of saints, there are a fair number of them with a relative low number of posts. You can do the math yourself.

Voting just because someone made the effort of posting seems silly to me. What's the point of voting then? The thrill of pushing some radio and submit buttons? If not, the process could be easily automated. Just give everyone X votes for each post they make, where X depends on the number of visitors.

I don't care much about XP, but I do see some validy in number of votes per article. Unfortunally, since most numbers will remain hidden, its usefullness is extremely limited.

Abigail

artist