Due to social pressures to not act like a complete jerk, compliments are preferred to insults. It has made compliments completely meaningless. Now, when someone gives me a compliment, I know that it is only because they feel unfair pressure to not yell insults at me (the possibility that they could do neither is simply unimaginable, which is why every single person I get near all day throws meaningless compliments at me).

The world would be much better if we were required to insult at least as many people as we compliment...

...then the world would be more like... Usenet!

"Let me make a bold proposal. To counterbalance the social pressure, making ++ votes should come with a price. Like losing a positive number of XP. Or a rule that your number of ++ votes/day could never be more than twice the number of -- votes, and the other way around as well (with the obvious exception of your first vote). "

So you'd penalize those making supportive votes on the assumption that they are only being made as a courtesy rather than out of a desire to throw support behind a particular point of view without cluttering the site with a needless "ditto" post? This seems a bit presumptive as to the intent of voters. I personally don't have the gift of reading minds and would never presume to make that kind of judgement...

Likewise, forcing ++ votes to exceed -- votes assumes that there is less merit in identifying posts that lack worthwhile content, or even contain offensive content, than there is in throwing support behind meritorious posts. If that were true then why do we bother with a Node Reaper? -- votes are a way for the community to identify nodes that deserve his attention.

The xp system is not broken. Let it be what it is.