I agree with you completely. They are both at a relatively high reputation. What irritates me is being reminded continually that this is going on. Perhaps I should turn off my XP Nodelet so that when I come back to the monastery after a couple days I am not reminded that useless votes have been cast against me so some child can gain XP. I would still see nodes with negative rep when browsing my own nodes.

That part bothers me. Not that I lose XP, because frankly, when I post I rarely see a node get below a rep of 10 or 15. What bothers me is the continual reminder that people are doing that. It reminds me just how much a portion of (theyre not just the minor few, they make up a percentage of the active monks in the monastery) us I really dislike. It makes me feel unwelcome, and not want to be here.

I'll take it a step further. I'll bet that this is what most of us who complain about "personality" or "automaton" downvoting dislike. The people who are complaining -- yourself, tilly, me, merlyn (im sure I am forgetting others), are people with a lot of posts and a lot of XP. It would be near impossible for somebody to even take me down a level with downvoting. It would literally require dozens of accounts. Same for the rest of us. What the downvoting constitutes for us, however, is a fairly constant reminder that somebody in our midst sucks.

Which is why I asked to be removed from the situation entirely. I dont much vote on nodes anymore. I dont have a lot of time to go over the monastery, so when I vote, it's usually on replies to nodes of my own. While I like the reputation as an indicator of the worth of a node, I am confident that enough monks are going to continue voting.

Furthermore, the fact that the root node of this thread gained as much rep as it did indicates to me that quite a few people would take this course of action as well. It also has the added benefit of being the simplest solution to the problem that I have seen yet. Not a whole lot of code involved. Drastic, yet localized, results.

That having been said, I have gotten a few (thank you) replies to that node indicating they voted -- because it was "angry" or "low quality." While I am still angry, please consider this node an explanation for the first.

I'm gonna go turn off my XP nodelet now.

brother dep.

update: you cannot turn off your XP nodelet.

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Laziness, Impatience, Hubris, and Generosity.