One of the options in voting is to take a vote away from a nodes score. My question- short and simple: Why -- a node?

Down voting nodes is a disincentive to timid monks, who choose to post as Anonymous monks, instead. It is my opinion that unless a node is trollish/(utterly inane) in nature there is no reason to down vote it. After all, the monk had the courage to voice their opinion or question for the rest of us to read, and there is merit in courage. (I.e. paco. Down voting nodes that don’t have true merit is a disincentive for new monks to learn by posting; something that I believe this community should be promoting to its’ utmost.

Instead I see node ratings go down, where a node is logical and pertinent to the website. I ask again: What reason is there to down vote such a node? Is it because you feel that it is your responsibility to moderate nodes, and give them ratings correlated to the merit of the node, or is there some ulterior motive that I miss? Even nodes in which the questioner is utterly off or poster is completely off topic, what would make you want to down vote the node? Isn’t there a strong node that merits a ++, instead?

My personal belief is that voting should be used for something closer to “meta-moderation”, where nodes/replies with low scores would be weeded out by monks not voting on a node, down voting is done when I find a node that I believe does not merit the website at all, and should be deleted by an editor. I sparsely down vote nodes- making the decision to do so when a node is either OT or trollish, yet others seem to have different rules.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider how we vote, or consider as a group the formula for voting? What are your rules for down voting? There are so many strong nodes, and I believe it is the responsibility of monks to promote these, instead of dwelling on nodes that they see as "not worth their points" (which I see as a part of a karma-oriented society. BAD.)
Gyan Kapur
gyan.kapur@rhhllp.com

In reply to Why - - A Node? by Revelation

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.