I provided the following illustration:

++	--	Total vote	tension
100	5	95	low
10	5	5	low
5	100	-95	low
5	5	0	low
100	100	0	high
20	20	0	medium
50	20	30	medium-high

In response, giulienk provided an interesting attempt at an empirical formulation of the idea. I played with it, but it was not quite satisfactory, especially since it seemed coarse-grained at lower magnitudes.

The core issue is capturing the magnitude of opposing votes. 100 positive votes and 0 negative represents no contention. 5 positive and 5 negative represents some, but not huge contention. So I employed Occam's Razor on the formulation and decided:

1. All non-opposed votes have no effect.
2. The remaining delta serves as an effective indicator of tension
3. Further qualification (low, med, high, etc) might be unnecessary

Formula:  $t = min($plus, $minus) * 2

Recasting the original example, this would yield:

++	--	Total vote	tension
100	5	95	10
10	5	5	10
5	100	-95	10
5	5	0	10
100	100	0	200
20	20	0	40
50	20	30	40

This accurately captures the magnitude of contention without revealing, beyond bare necessity, the actual votes cast.

Questions:

1. Is this something other monks would like to see on pre-voted nodes, perhaps as an option? What about while considering a node?
2. If interested, what better ideas (if any) can we come up with for representing tension?