I noticed today that the value of $NORM is 9.1something. A few months ago, I recall it was in the neighborhood of 11. (For those who don't know what $NORM is, I direct you to Voting/Experience System).

Does this drop in $NORM signify anything useful? It's the average rep of nodes created in the last week. It means that nodes, overall, aren't getting as many upvotes as they used to. A few possible reasons:

People are upvoting less. Are people being more judicious with their upvotes? Are fewer people voting in general? Do they just not make nodes like they used to? Are there fewer "home run" nodes that get 100+ reps and thus pull the average up?

More nodes are getting downvoted. Some people go out of their way to get negative votes, but I can't think of anyone actively doing that right now. If people *are* downvoting more, and nobody is deliberately trying to goad people in downvoting, I think that would be something to investigate. An increase in "negative energy" in the Monastery should be a concern.

Does anyone even track what $NORM is from day to day? Is there a trend? Would it be useful to know if there was? Does $NORM tell us anything useful about the "health" of the Monastery?

Update: OK I see I already got the obligatory "Posts about XP get a -1" but this isn't an XP post.

In reply to $NORM is dropping! Should we care? by husker

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