-ve XP, node reputation, voting and learning
Why is my reputation falling?
Reasons for downvoting

Everyone has their own individual and sometimes fickle reasons for downvoting, from personal downvoting or disagreeing with something a person has said to plain XP Whoring; people wasting their votes in order to gain just that bit more XP. If the downvotes are in the minority, I wouldn't give much thought to it; just remember that the XP system is essentially flawed in various ways, and after you reach Level 6 (Friar) most people begin not to pay much attention to XP anyway.

However, if you really cannot see the reason why your post is being downvoted en masse and you are concerned, you can always ask the opinion of the CB; some people may give you advice on why it is being downvoted, but I think it should be the perogative of the voter to decide whether they should tell the person who is being downvoted why. A lot of people don't have that much time to spend on the site, and a lot of downvoted nodes (or the ones I downvote, at least) such as flames, personal attacks on people, completely irrelevenant replies etc. don't even warrant a /msg.

--
rozallin j. thompson
The Webmistress who doesn't hesitate to use strict;

I looked at these, but the most recent one about this was over a year old, so I wanted to see if any newer monks had anything interesting to say about the topic.

The reason I posed the original question(which by the way recieved a good number of downvotes itself), was because when I was going through some old posts I came across this one Re: Who am I? Who are you? Who are us?. I just thought it was a little extreme to down vote a post like that(it is at -1 rep).

I was just wondering how other monks choose whether to ++ or -- a post.

I imagine some people won't want to answer this, but as I've publicly discussed my voting strategy before, I'll do so again.

In technical threads, especially replies to SoPW queries, I tend to use my votes in an attempt to order the replies by reputation. In my user settings I've set the "Best First" option for note ordering, which causes the replies to be displayed in order by reputation. Therefore, my goal is simply to get the reply which I think is best to the top of the display. I do this by upvoting it first. If there are still nodes with a higher rep than it, I'll downvote them next.

That's the idea, anyway. In reality, I often find two, three, or more nodes that I think are really pretty good at answering the question in which case I don't downvote any of them on principle. Also, I don't use this method on threads in which I wouldn't be comfortable answering myself. In other words, if I'm not real familiar with the subject matter I won't try to rank the replies. I will, in that case, upvote nodes which explain something to me.

In threads which are opinion oriented, such as often come up in meditations and discussions, I usually just upvote nodes I agree with rather than downvote nodes I disagree with. There are exceptions, but that's the general rule I follow. An exception is that I will sometimes downvote a suggestion offered in Perl Monks Discussion if I really think it is a bad idea.

There are some other factors. I upvote questions which I think are really good or which I might have asked myself had I discovered the need to. I upvote poetry, obfuscations snippets, and CUFPs that I like, but I very rarely downvote nodes in those categories. I downvote obvious trolls, requests for homework, and very poorly asked questions. I also sometimes downvote answers that consist of nothing more than "perldoc perlfoo" (unless the question specifically requested documentation) and I almost always downvote ones that consist of nothing more than "well golly-gee-whiz, I have an article on that too" with a link pointing off-site.

I've recently noticed some of my posts, which I thought to be pretty good (as did some other monks because, because the post ended up with a decent rep) getting --.

Don't sweat it. It happens to us all¹. A single anonymous vote without context means absolutely nothing²

1. In fact, as I was writing this, it seems that someone came along and downvoted no less than 10 nodes of mine. In order to try to maximize the effect of their votes on my XP, they viewed all my write-ups, ordered by reputation (probably lowest first) and then downvoted my worst rep nodes. End result: I lost 2 XP... and I've gained it back already. Lesson: If several downvotes from a determined personality voter don't do any harm, a few random ones certainly won't. The system is actually much more robust than it appears.

2. Some extrapolate that to mean that node rep itself means nothing. I disagree strongly with them. Node reputation has context and is an aggregate. What and how much it means are entirely dependent on context, though, and are open to interpretation (or perhaps "wild speculation").

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

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I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.

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"I just read perlman:perlboot," said Tom, objectively.
naChoZ

You shouldn't be too concerned about a few -- votes. Sometimes you might get it just because of the natural variation among people.

Something could get 100% positive responses only when no one actually read it. You're bound to have "outliers" or disagreement once a while in a free open community.

I think a reason why many people may choose not to explain their downvotes is to avoid escalating flaming war. It's easy to happen when people get defensive.

I would hesitate to establish voting guideline, let alone enforcing it, for the sake of diversity. The self-governing mechanism here seems to work fairly well so far.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In addition what you've said, I generally downvote
• entire off-topic threads (especially the "can you guys be my search engine" kind, or "can you be my man" -- I like to -- the answers first, cause the encourage posting to SOPW instead of issuing a `man command')
• nodes getting off topic (like the beginning of a flamefest, or simply a discussion of how X really works)
• lazy nodes (asking questions easily answered by "perldoc -f", especially by monks who how to use perldoc f -- it's not that they can't understand the manual, but they demand it be recited to them )
• preechy nodes (the kind merlyn is known to write)
• hypocritical nodes (merlyn is also known to write some of these, not practicing what he preeches)
• ignore nodes (where a poster chooses to ignore the answers, continually reposts code he gets as answers untill the community essentialy writes his code)
• ignorant nodes (where a monk, convinced he is right, continually argues a point disproved in the node he first replied to, all the while getting more frustruated and rude, dragging it out 10 nodes deep, and in the end not even acknowledging he was wrong, much less apologizing for being rude)
• ideas I dislike (for example artist often comes up with feature suggestions that just don't make sense to me)
• dumb jokes (especially those presented as answers to legitimate questions -- especially those of the religious war genre)
Don't be fooled though, I do spend most of my votes ++ing good questions and answers (it's a good thing I got lots of them).

-ted-

Given the length of time since this was first discussed, I wouldn't hold my breath. ;)

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"I just read perlman:perlboot," said Tom, objectively.
naChoZ

You can tell by visiting frequently enough to see the rep go up and down. There's no other way currently.

Makeshifts last the longest.

jdporter
The 6th Rule of Perl Club is -- There is no Rule #6.