(we have just a few people casting almost all of the downvotes being cast)

Perhaps it's ignorance on my part, but I would not have expected that information to be tracked/knowable. Is there no anonymity in voting on PM? I know you must be logged in, but are things being logged showing how everyone has voted?

If that information is/can be known (by some/few/any)does that not leave one open to a reprisals?

If I believe a node deserves a --, I'd like to be able to do it without wondering if they will try to get back at me.

FWIW: If --s are truely small in number, perhaps there could be some way of optionally adding a comment for that case (annonymously of course). I'd be interested to know why someone thought a node was -- worthy. Of course the same could be interesting on the ++ side but that's obviously not feasible. Besides I think most can easily aceept "they liked something" so great; however, with the neg some info/reason may serve to mitigate.

Of course voting is tracked. How else could we know you've already voted on a node (and thus show you the reputation instead of voting buttons).

The fact that most of the down-votes are cast by a few users was based on the results of a query that showed recent down-vote counts per user ordered from most to fewest. I did it a while ago but I doubt I went to the extra effort to display monk names so the query probably just showed user ID numbers.

In any case, I was looking at the counts not the users and I don't recall any monk names nor ID numbers. I don't really care how any user votes. I sometimes care about how the voting system is working or not working (usually when someone complains).

Pretty much anything you do on a computer can be monitored by some administrator somewhere. I've administered computers in some capacity for two decades.

One doesn't abuse privileges to go poking around at information one has some personal issue with as that could lead to finding it, which just sucks (you can't do anything with the information and there is a point to the phrase 'ignorance is bliss'). It has been many years since I made that mistake (and even worse is *having* to deal with personal information of non-strangers as part of your job).

- tye        

I certainly don't disagree overall and I certainly don't think there's any problem. I was simply surprised that the info was retained.

How else could we know you've already voted on a node

Dunno... possibly just with a flag... Voted = TRUE/FALSE as apposed to the actual vote.

I'd be interested to know why someone thought a node was -- worthy.

A non-significant percentage of the votes I cast are --. There are several reasons I -- a post:
• Off topic posts.
• Postings that are badly phrased, badly formatted, unclear or ambigious.
• Questions that ask to be spoon-fed, or contains hundreds of lines of code and a "it doesn't work".
• FAQs, or questions whose answers could be found easily in the documentation.
• Answers that are wrong.
• Replies that don't answer the question.
• Followup questions of the form "that answers the question, but my real problem is..."
• Posts with misleading subjects.
• Opinions that are presented as facts.
• Posts that make wild claims without backing them up with some proofs.
Now, the majority of the posts that I read and fall in one of the categories, I don't give any votes for. But there are reasons enough to vote --.

Abigail

The gods can view votes cast by and upon any individual user. Only the gods can view this and it's not shown by default anywhere.

I wouldn't worry about any of the other gods smiting you for some perceived slight. (I wouldn't worry about me either, but all I'm saying is that I trust the other gods to act responsibly and maturely.) You don't get to be a god by worrying about your own XP fluctuations.