I don't agree that a node's reputation is completely meaningless. In the context of someone who has asked a question near the edge of their abilities and who now must sort through N disparate suggestions, the ability to discover that N/4 (or even 1) of those suggestions has been deemed to be wrong is very helpful. Ordering by reputation (but without seeing reputation) doesn't give you that. You can't distinguish between the end of the list still being a good suggestion, and it being deemed nonsense.

Again, a node's reputation has, at best, a tangential relationship to its correctness.

Again, I don't see how knowing that one reply has a reputation of 12 and the other has a reputation of 2 means anything. Too many other factors affect node reputation: time of day, day of week, tone of post, logged-in users, whether a node is on the front page, whether a node is in Newest Nodes, along with features that are even harder to measure.

This proposal is trying to put weight on a foundation that won't hold.

I've replied to dozens of incorrect posts that had positive reputations. The best way to mark a node as incorrect is to reply with a correction, not to downvote it and hope that the original poster sees the reply before attempting to take the advice of the incorrect node, that the original poster casts enough null votes to rank the reputations of these nodes in relationship to each other in a meaningful way, or that the original poster has reputation ordering enabled.

The purpose of voting is for individuals to say "this node is of helpful to the community" and "this node is harmful to the community".

I don't agree. I think that a reply like "read this documentation" or "I have an article on that" might be helpful to the community but I often downvote them, especially if a better answer occurs in the thread. In fact, my normal strategy for voting on the replies in a thread¹ is to try to order them best to worst (IMHO, of course) when viewed by reputation. I do that by first upvoting the reply which I think is best and sometimes by downvoting nodes which have a higher reputation than it does. (I order by rep so I know the relative order.)

For a node's reputation to have any meaning as a number, you'd need several other statistics

Other statistics would be nice. They aren't necessary.

Do you vote with any strategy other than a random one? Because, if you do, then you don't act as if node reputation is meaningless. It's ridiculous to cast a vote with intention and then argue that node rep is meaningless. I wholeheartedly agree that the meaning of a node's reputation is hard to pin down. It exists only in context. It's entirely relative. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I vote as if it does exist; therefore, it does.

My rule is, "Any moderation system that causes conversations to degenerate into discussions about the moderation system is broken." Omphaloskepsis is the death rattle of a community.

I think that contemplating the moderation system is a bit more like pondering one's tactile nervous system than his belly button.

1. This is the strategy I usually apply to replies to technical questions. On matters of opinion, like this thread for instance, I usually just upvote nodes I agree with. I upvote meditations and replies to them if I find them interesting.

Edit: Changed "A think" to "I think".

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Do you vote with any strategy other than a random one? Because, if you do, then you don't act as if node reputation is meaningless.

Before trotting out the tired old accusation of hypocrisy, please review my argument. The reputation of an individual node is almost completely meaningless.

On those rare occasions when I vote (perhaps one vote a week), my strategy is very much like yours. I upvote posts, such as the one by chunlou in this very discussion, that appear near the bottom of the discussion and, as such, are undervalued.

My desire is not to say "This node deserves a 3, while this node should never be more than 1". It's to make a single suggestion as to the relationships between nodes within a discussion for people who have reputation ordering enabled. That's it.

My vote counts for very little in a discussion. That's fine. No one's ever promised that the absolute best, clearest, and most accurate answer will always float to the top, without fail. I distrust any system that tries to make that kind of promise — it's not a promise that can be fulfilled, and I'd much rather say "We have a working system that gives you a very rough guide that may be useful. Take it as a suggestion, but continue to use your brain."

(Okay, there's also downvoting to trigger automatic reaping of nodes that are completely devoid of worthwhile content, but that's a separate issue.)

Before trotting out the tired old accusation of hypocrisy, please review my argument. The reputation of an individual node is almost completely meaningless.

Now, I did stop short of calling you a hypocrite. I know I did because I deleted that sentence. :-)

So, if node rep falls short of being "completely meaningless", then you agree that it has some meaning. It is somewhat informative and not pure noise. So, how is it again that providing this information to people is a bad idea?

I'd much rather say "We have a working system that gives you a very rough guide that may be useful. Take it as a suggestion, but continue to use your brain."

You seem to be under the impression that providing an abstain option of some sort would change the message that the system provides only a rough guide and that it would prevent or discourage people from using their brain in assessing content.

Is that it? Because if it is, I think that A) people should be given more credit than that, and B) if an individual doesn't deserve more credit than that, he isn't using his brain anyway. You are misguided if you believe that the system, as is, makes people think more than they would if the proposed change were made. The functionality you provide will neither make people think nor prevent them from it; that's a function of the individual.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

I don't agree. A think that a reply like "read this documentation" or "I have an article on that" might be helpful to the community but I often downvote them, especially if a better answer occurs in the thread.

I disagree. I think a reply with a reference link can be just as useful as an answer that reveals and discusses the answer. I downvote unhelpful, flippant answers, and incomplete answers that were obviously dashed off in order to make it to be first post. I don't downvote a reply that's just a link .. sometimes, in order to solve a problem, a link to the right page is all that's necessary.

--t. alex
Life is short: get busy!

I disagree.

You disagree with what? My statement that such replies might be helpful to the community but that I often downvote them?

I suppose you are trying to say that you disapprove¹ of my choice to do so, which is fine, but then I didn't ask and I'll still vote the way I think is best.

1. Disagreement is not synonymous with disapproval. You disagree with what one thinks. You disapprove of what one does.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";