Anyone else care to comment?

Upvoting

• Interesting well thought out questions that provide an opportunity for the community as a whole to learn or grow from.
• Interesting and well thought out answers to questions or solutions to problems.
• Nodes that contribute something worthwhile to the Perl Monks community

In general I am more apt to upvote than downvote. For the most part I take the tack that if I have nothing nice to say then why bother. Life is too short.

That doesn't mean I won't downvote a node that sorely deserves it.

Downvoting

• Trollish posts
• Personal attacks
• Flames
• Nodes that are being considered for deletion that truly deserve it.
• Nodes that read like they are meant to hurt, slander, bully, or otherwise are detrimental to the Perl Monks community

In case you didn't catch it, I use the word "community" here quite a bit. One of the guiding principles of The Monastery is the fact that we are a community not a rabble like some other sites that I won't mention here. A community is supposed to support its members and not tear them down. If you keep that in mind you will have no trouble figuring out what needs upvoting or downvoting.

Another thought: RTFM responses IMHO sometimes deserve an upvote as long as the RTFM is followed by what M to FR.

I am also much more likely to upvote a node over downvoting a node. I'm also more likely to not vote at all on a node that others might be tempted to down vote than down vote it.

I like the idea of community. In general, I follow similar guidelines in my upvotes and my occasional downvotes. On an individual basis I also upvote things that I find interesting or amusing or that teach me something new. I admit that I don't always weigh everything with a higher purpose of community benefit in mind.

I think that the community at Perl Monks is very diverse. There's a vast range of experience, competency and styles represented here, from newbie dabblers to professional programmers. It could be chaotic. But it seems to me that it all evens out through the voting. Whatever standard people individually apply to a node, they usually seem to agree on what is very good and what's not. I've never seen something that I consider a Great Node ever appear in the "worst nodes of the day" or seen a Terrible Node get tremendous upvotes. The cream rises, the sludge settles to the bottom and most everything else sits moderately in between, helping some, boring others but all in all providing the energy that keeps this site alive.

I mostly upvote replies, and sometimes Meditations, but not many questions. I will upvote any reply that I think is informative, well-written, and correct.

I downvote rude posts. I will sometimes downvote RTFM replies that are phrased rudely, even where an RTFM is appropriate. I also downvote replies that present themselves as authoritative but contain glaring mistakes that don't appear accidental.

I upvote any node the likes of which I would very much like to see here. I downvote any node the likes of which I would very much like not to see here.

Nothing objective about it. Like it or not.

I upvote nodes which provide useful information or which are funny. I especially make a point of upvoting nodes which ask interesting questions. Those last are, I think, the most important nodes on this site, as I often learn new ways of looking at problems from them, and new ways of solving problems from the answers they generate.

by eg not being able to spell or punctuate despite clearly speaking English as his first tongue

Just for the record, it's "e.g.". :)

There are a lot of undeserved upvotes for easy to ask questions, and downvotes for terse, but complete answers. If this is all done objectively, then the folks that do this are generally pretty shallow. Since I'd like to think that this isn't the case, and I'm guilty of that from time to time, I'm hoping subjectivity is rather common. :-)