In my opinion, questions should be exempt from voting completely. Homework aside, a poor quality question still represents someone needing some assistance, and if we -- a question, what exactly are we conveying? Do we really want the OP to restate the question?

I see the voting as almost a Darwinian system designed to encourage high-quality answers. ++ complete, thoughtful, accurate, or maybe just succinct answers. -- obvious "me too" duplicates, inappropriate golfing, non-portable solutions (where it matters), inefficient or just plain wrong answers.

That's what my votes have come to mean.

In my opinion, questions should be exempt from voting completely.

• Yes, very good point. - There seems to be no reason to vote for the quality of a perlquestion.
• and yet - No, there may be a need to downvote a flame, trolling, non perl-community advertisement, or a post that's otherwise off-topic and of no relevance:
  Make it appear in Worst Nodes for the monks to notice so it will eventually be reaped.
  And then there are questions where you read the monk in question has worked hard to make the discoveries he presents to you, but hasn't reached his goal.
  You will want to upvote him for the effort sharing his work experience with Perl.

Cheerio, Sören

In my opinion, questions should be exempt from voting completely.

But, but, asking questions is a fast way of gaining XP! It's far from uncommon to have the root node (the question) have the most node-reputation of the entire thread - especially if it was frontpaged. Just take a look at the best nodes every now and then.

Now, what we need is a voting system on the acts of frontpaging and approving.

Abigail

You're right, of course, but I still feel that the votes should go for/against the quality of the responses, not the questions.

But, then again, to disagree with myself, and support your tongue-in-cheek first sentence, isn't a good question that stimulates constructive discussion, and exploration of perl-space a good thing, perhaps worth voting for?