you cannot know the reputation of a node so long as you haven't voted for or against it .... This makes it, IMHO, much less useful than if you could see upfront that this particular node that you are visiting has been very much up- or down- voted by other monks.

I agree, but I understand the reasoning. Namely the very human habit of going with the crowd. There is no simple solution to resolve that habit whilst allowing people to chose to pass-over low rep nodes.

But maybe there is. If the suggestion above that once a node has demonstrated a sufficient downward trend to allow (automated) judgement to be passed, then the node is replaced by an official warning and further voting on it gets suspended.

Of course, where you set the break points and how you account for the possibility that initial flurry's of downvotes can sometimes be later countered by more reasoned upvotes -- a trend I've witnessed on more than a few of my own posts which have initially been misunderstood or misinterpreted -- would require very careful thought. I won't even make a suggestion for such a formula.