Maybe so, but i think most low-level monks choose their votes wisely because they do not have a lot of votes to cast each day. I know i did. Most of the time i played catch up - i would bookmark good nodes when i ran out of votes and ++ them the next day ... pretty soon i was only voting on nodes from the previous day. :)

"...I'd post an incredible number of simple but not silly nodes, shoveling xp points out of 'em..."

I've seen a few newer monks start out at this site by doing that, but extreme saturation like that really hurts them in the end. If i see 5 posts in a row by someone within a very short amount of time, i'll generally only vote for what i consider to be their most useful node to me.

"I'm working towards the 'friar' status, but I wanna be sure to get there for my merits and not by chance..."

I'm afraid you will have to settle for a blend of the two. As my good friend extremely says - high XP at Perlmonks does not necessarily mean you are good at Perl, just good at Perlmonks. :)

I'll end by saying that as you increase in level at this site, the difficulty of sticking around gets harder. You will get a lot more out of this site by forgetting about XP now ... i know i would have left in discouragement a long time ago if i still worried about XP - i still do, but only if i say something wrong. If i answer someone's question and only get, say 5 ++ points, i don't care about the points if i truely helped that person. My biggest reward in that regard is a private /msg or a reply of thanks.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)