A quick search turned up: ? why do you vote like you do ?, Votes & Reputation, Who voted negative on my node ?, RE: Yet Another Post on Experience, To better discern when to vote. Also there is the ever wise: How should I spend my votes? -- General Voting Guidelines. Which should be the guide for all looking on "how to vote?"

But my point here is not "you should have searched", rather that everyone gets the blues about --. It's just the way things go in a large community like this, though. You can't avoid clashing of opinion, and, even worse, silly people voting in their silly way. Take heart though that the system does work very very well. Two great examples of this are merlyn and princepawn. No one will argue that merlyn is one of the smartest and most perl adept men lurking these halls, but he gets a fair share of -- for being just that. Then there's the extreme of princepawn who, many times deserving of some --, was still mostly in the ++ and advanced the levels despite his apparent unpopularity.

The basic theme is don't let a little -- get you down. There is no explaining it sometimes. If you post well, both in answers and questions, and take your quest here and with perl seriously, there is no doubt you will be a valued and ++ed member of the community. =)

"A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the
seriousness one had as a child, at play."   --Nietzsche
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