I think the idea has great merit. If you consider What Perl Monks is, How can a person improve their skills (not just Perl skills but also writing and communication skills) without feedback? Is a -- vote feedback? Only if you know that you received one.

On a related issue, I would like to offer my opinions on the potential misuse of -- voting in ways that detract from the spirit of the site.

Individuals that -- more than they ++ do so out of laziness, vindictiveness, or jealousy. It's far more difficult to find "worthy" nodes to ++. At the time of this post I'm an acolyte and have a difficult time finding eight "worthy" nodes to upvote each day. It is not a task I take lightly. Instead of spending an average of 60-90 minutes browsing my favorite sections (SOPW, Meditations and PMD), I could easily go to SOPW and cast eight --'s in less than 30 seconds. Does this serve the site in any positive way?

As a rule of thumb:

• I downvote nodes that strike me as mean spirited or negative.
• If the usefulness of a given node is not apparent to me, I leave it to individuals better qualified to make a determination.
• If I think a node contains bad information or I disagree with it in principle, I repy to it and try to offer something useful.
• If a post is unintelligible or vague, I ask for clarification.

I suppose that what I'm getting at is that the XP system currently in place offers more "rewards" to those that downvote. There is no stigma attached.

My suggestion is that a simple ++/-- vote ratio be kept and updated weekly on each individual. Call it a Positivity Ratio (PR). This ratio could be viewed at each individual's home node.

"Resolve to do something useful, honorable, dutiful, and do it heartily." --Frelinghuysen.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.