I do this quite a bit. I don't understand how this is "taking a monk down a peg"? The monk got 64 votes and a few dozen XP for a too-short, too-simplistic, mostly-but-not-completely-correct reply. After all of that, my downvote doesn't hurt much at all.

Better than that, it helps (in some tiny, tiny way -- which is about all you can hope for with a single vote) to discourage monks from posting too quickly "just because" short, easy-to-understand, fast replies tend to get more ++ votes due to community dynamics.

I also sort replies by rep and so I sometime downvote nodes that are "listed too high" in comparison to other replies.

And none of this is "voting the reputation". I vote the node contents but I take the node's reputation (and the node's author) into consideration!

I'm very reluctant to downvote newbies as that just leads to a bad initial experience when they don't even know enough to learn from the downvote. I'm relatively reluctant to upvote nodes by those with high XP (I know they can post "good" nodes quite a bit, so I want to see something that is "a good node, considering who wrote it") or that have recently posted a ton.

I upvote nodes that have too low of a rep when I think I understand the reason for the low rep and that I don't agree with that reason (for example, if a node dares to say something negative about "perl" but is accurate). In a "discussion" I will only upvote the very best of the thread while in "code" threads I may upvote the entire thread because I find that "discussion"s get higher reps than "code" threads (if that changes, then so will my voting).

So I'm left to assume that footpad does a sort of mindless, feel-good upvoting only and doesn't take much of anything complex into consideration {duck}. If I had more choices in voting besides -, +, 0, then I might not need to use downvoting as often in order to satisfy my desire to have my votes make sense to me.

I do make an effort to not downvote in a way that is likely to result in an "Ack!" message nor in a node with a negative reputation, because I don't particularly like either of those except in extreme cases. But, in the current environment of 98% upvotes, I do downvote quite a bit. Just because I vote this way doesn't mean I want everyone to vote this way (if everyone else did vote this way, I certainly wouldn't anymore!).

I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on this, for I see little difference between the personality voting that's so hated and this practice.

I do understand your logic; I simply disagree with it. I don't think it's fair to the community as a whole, for your criteria involves something other than the node's quality. As chipmunk said earlier in the thread, "If you don't think a node's worthwhile then don't vote on it." This is part of what I was trying to get it when I suggested people vote responsibly.

And, for the record, your assumption is slightly wrong. (No need to duck; informed criticism is always welcome.) I do vote nodes down...when I feel the content is wrong, misguided, non-contributing, trollish, and so on. I do think certain nodes are overrated, but would rather (if enough of us are that upset over it) use a different approach to handle it.

I reward nodes I like, learn from, or feel have generated interesting conversation. But I do not punish nodes because they've been successful. I do not vote them down because I feel the community over-reacted. I simply don't feel that's fair to the poster.

It's a different point of view. That's all. I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm simply disagreeing with the practice.

If you feel voting a node for anything other than its content is wrong when we call it "personality voting," then how is "fitting a node" to its "appropriate" reputation any different? You're judging it against something other than its content. It's the same thing under a different name.

I may disagree with the community's overall assessment, but I'm willing to accept the fact that the tribe has spoken. Besides, there are enough nodes that teach me something that I don't really have votes remaining to "correct" their reputations.

--f

The point of the jab was really the "mindless" part. You seem to supported "considered non-voting" but insist that voting be a mindless, simplistic calculation based solely on node content. I strongly disagree.

If I voted strictly and enclusively on node content then I'd only be allowed to vote on the very best nodes which means that 90% of the monks would never get any of my votes.

I don't know where you got this moral stance but suspect it stems from some misguided overextension of "voting based solely on the author is bad". I agree with that quote where you can replace "author" with just about anyhing but "content". But, for most values of "X", I strongly disagree with "taking X into consideration when voting is bad".

I may disagree with the community's overall assessment, but I'm willing to accept the fact that the tribe has spoken.

I think you are demonstrating a logical fallacy here. The "tribe" can't "speak" and the rep doesn't represent the community's overall assessment. The rep mostly (currently) represents how quickly the reply was posted and how easy the node was to understand! Why should I respect such a value??

I think taking global information into consideration when voting is a good thing. It doesn't make my vote unfair unless you think rep being mostly based on speed and simplicity is fair. It isn't the case that speed and simplicity became the biggest rep determiners due to most monks valuing them over all other virtues. They have the biggest influence on rep due to quirks in the voting system and in the node presentation system.

So I'm bucking the quirks in the system for the benefit of having the reps be more useful (and so that I feel good about the way I voted). Sure, the reps aren't extremely useful, but I you want to argue that I shouldn't "play games" (come on, voting at all is more "a game" than anything else) because the reps aren't important, then lets just throw out voting altogether!

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")