We all have something to learn from experience :-)

--bronto

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The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz

The strongest factor is whether the node happens to be in a thread that gets moved to the PM "front page" (the Monastery Gates) -- this determines the number's magnitude. Next is the quality of the post itself, which often (but not always) determines the sign (positive for clear, concise, goal-directed posts that show evidence of a working brain; negative for posts that are vague, cumbersome, snide/pouty/unpleasant, or simply brainless in one or more myriad, possibly obscure ways). This latter effect is weak -- prone to be masked by the inevitable random component of the process -- when the primary effect (front paging) does not come into play.

In my short time at the monastery, I have also found nodes to get downvoted for: 1) being too friendly, personal, or chatty, 2) to self-deprecating, as in "I'm just a newbie' or "This is probably a really dumb question, or 3) too off-topic (OT) having little to do with Perl or the charter of PM's (which you will only learn my osmosis).

Abigail-II asked the more interesting question in her very witty node, "why am I getting ++ votes?" That speaks to your point, graff of the "inevitable random component" of the process. We all get downvotes, but if we understand why, we'll get better at asking and replying in a way that benefits all who frequent this online community.

—Brad
"A little yeast leavens the whole dough."