I agree with you, and I want to make two comments:

most people (I hope?) are more conservative with their votes and only spend them where they really believe they should go

Absolutely. If a node has taught me something or provided a reference/snippet/etc I know I'll use, I'll consider upvoting it because I like to reward posts that I find helpful. I see upvoting as a form of reinforcement (see below) as well as a way to say "thank you" for the help.

as has been stated in earlier posts, most people do prefer to see their nodes upvoted rather than downvoted. So it has meaning to those people

Node rep does have meaning (to me), but for a different reason than I think is usually implied. I watch the rep of nodes I wrote because I like to see if my understanding of that particular aspect Perl is correct (this assumes, of course, that "correct" responses will be upvoted, but I won't get into that discussion again or I'd just duplicate this whole thread). This is especially important while low on the learning curve, as it provides positive reinforcement on things I think I understand. This type of feedback gives me confidence in my code, but it also encourages me to continue contributing to the PM community. As a relatively new Monk I have received far more from PM than I've put back into it, but hopefully over time I'll be able to reciprocate. Thank you, everyone, for making PM such a rich learning environment.

In reply to Re^2: Node Rep - A newbies viewpoint by bobf
in thread Node Rep - A newbies viewpoint by TheEnigma

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