In my opinion you get too little XP from voting to tip the scales in any important way (apart from the first few levels, which should pass pretty fast anyways, if you are active)- only way to really climb the charts is to post (hopefully good) stuff.

At the same time, giving out some random XP to votes is a great way to encourage voting, especially in the early stages of monkhood.

Nowadays I vote on whatever I think deserves it, which means I spend at a guessing average 2/3 of my votes every day, and often spend them all - but it does not in any important way affect my XP, and hasn't for a long time.

I also think that the few "beginners votes" that might be cast just to gain XP has no bigger impact, but it will get the "beginner" some experience on how the voting system works, and hopefully establish the habit of voting, even when it doesn't really matter (for XP).

I guess the same idea is behind the fact that you get XP for spending all your votes in a day up till you reach Monk. It was Monk, wasn't it? Darn my poor memory.

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You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.