Take a look at your home node See those little entries at the top? One of those says "Experience" and is a pretty random number. It goes up, it goes down. Here's how it normally works. I post a question, it goes up by around 6, down by around 3. Note that I didn't specify whether the question was on topic, off topic, good, bad or even stupid. Here's what you have to keep in mind: that number doesn't mean anything. Nothing. Simple as that. "Experience" is a misnomer, it should be renamed "PerlMonks Experience", it has nothing to do with your perl experience, which is pretty much impossible to give a numerical value to. The range of ++ or -- votes you get per post is in a way dependant upon how high this number is. The number really defines how long you've been here, and how many people here like you. There are a bunch of people who will downvote a node simply because it has your name attached. This is not a set group of people, it's totally dependant upon who you are. merlyn likes to call these people "Personality Voters", as they vote on your nodes based upon your personality alone, nevermind the quality of the post.

Every question or answer I post from here on will be posted anonymously. This is because, I don't give a damn about what that number is. Nor do I care to gain the mysterious "level powers". I'm here to get help with my perl coding, and if possible help others with theirs.

Perlmonks has lost many users who were valuable assets to the community because of these "personality voters" and I would like to think that someday, these people will see that they are damaging a great resource by their childish actions.

The moral of the story is: I'm not here to be your buddy. I'm here to help and to get help, and that's how you should look at your own "PerlMonks Experience".

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.