The purpose of voting is for individuals to say "this node is of helpful to the community" and "this node is harmful to the community".

I don't agree. I think that a reply like "read this documentation" or "I have an article on that" might be helpful to the community but I often downvote them, especially if a better answer occurs in the thread. In fact, my normal strategy for voting on the replies in a thread¹ is to try to order them best to worst (IMHO, of course) when viewed by reputation. I do that by first upvoting the reply which I think is best and sometimes by downvoting nodes which have a higher reputation than it does. (I order by rep so I know the relative order.)

For a node's reputation to have any meaning as a number, you'd need several other statistics

Other statistics would be nice. They aren't necessary.

Do you vote with any strategy other than a random one? Because, if you do, then you don't act as if node reputation is meaningless. It's ridiculous to cast a vote with intention and then argue that node rep is meaningless. I wholeheartedly agree that the meaning of a node's reputation is hard to pin down. It exists only in context. It's entirely relative. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I vote as if it does exist; therefore, it does.

My rule is, "Any moderation system that causes conversations to degenerate into discussions about the moderation system is broken." Omphaloskepsis is the death rattle of a community.

I think that contemplating the moderation system is a bit more like pondering one's tactile nervous system than his belly button.

1. This is the strategy I usually apply to replies to technical questions. On matters of opinion, like this thread for instance, I usually just upvote nodes I agree with. I upvote meditations and replies to them if I find them interesting.

Edit: Changed "A think" to "I think".

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

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