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

Well, there's at least one saint with less than 10 posts.

Good on them - they've obviously been diligently attending the Monastery for well over the aforementioned ( You can do the math yourself I did-ish..) 18 months. Maybe they don't write perl - maybe they don't even program at all - there are many sysadmins / db designers who still contribute here. Maybe they don't feel that their written thoughts are worth sharing - but their opinion as reflected by voting is still important. Maybe they don't care at all about the fact that they've managed to accumulate sainthood over the years...

Voting just because someone made the effort of posting seems silly to me...

You missed my point, I think. I wasn't advocating anything of the sort. Voting is a way of encouraging participation, and hopefully improving the level of debate by indicating what the community finds helpful or not. Personally, I very rarely downvote, prefering reward to punishment (unlike yourself, who I presume was the downvoter of my previous reply, and will undoubtedly be downvoting this one too. If that's your style though, then that's fine...). I upvote nodes that are well written, that contain useful information, and occasionally (Poetry for instance, which I simply love the principle of), like Everest, for just 'being there'.

I don't care much about XP...

You seem to care about other people's though - complaining about saints-who-don't-post and downvoting...maybe you could organise a campaign to downvote all nodes of saints that are 'not worthy' - convince 1000 other monks, and you'll have them back down to initiate in no time.

I understand that it must be nice for you to keep seeing yourself floating at the top of the 'Other Users' nodelet - you contribute extensively, if occasionally negatively, to the Monastery, and you obviously feel justified in your opinion of what a saint 'should be'. For others though, voting may be the most useful contribution they can make on that particular day, and so enjoy just being able to reward others and help them reach *your* dizzy heights :)

Eagerly awaiting your --,
Ben.

PS - I'd upvote your reply simply for being thoughtful and raising the level of debate, but I've already used up today's quota - I'll have to wait until tomorrow now :)
B