To sum up - don't worry about it.

Actually, I do think gnu@perl raises a valid point. It irks me too that there are so many postings that look like the poster is only interested in posting a reply as soon as possible - with any reply better than no reply. It then often looks like the replyer hasn't read the question, or perhaps has read the question, but a few keywords in the question just triggered a response. Is it the quest for XP - post as often as possible? Is it the short attention span people have nowadays.

On average, I only spend a few votes a day, but I vote -- much more than ++. Responses that look like the replyer didn't bother reading or understanding the question make up a fair share. Such postings are as irksome as questions where the asker of the question doesn't show any initiative. Most of us want a person asking a question to have read the documentation, and/or made an attempt to solve the problem. If we ask that from a person asking a question, is it too much to ask for a replyer to have read and understood the question?

Last week, a question was asked "What is the best way to add feature XXX to my to be written program", to which I replied that he was too early in the design phase to answer that, including explainations of why it was too early. Someone else had to critisize me for not pointing to various modules that might do that (without taking himself the trouble of listing them). That someone had clearly not read the entire question, because the question wasn't a quantitative one, but a qualitative one.

I bet the S/N ratio would increase if people replying to postings fully read the questions. But he, as long as the people voting don't read them as well, and vote ++ for useless answers, they'll stay.

Abigail