Hi Monks,
I tend to give much more ++ votes than --, because I happen to be happy to read fine postings/articles in a community like this.

Nevertheless, when I vote -- it usually comes down to one of these:

• Question is useless; no code posted, no question asked, just told a long story what one wants to do
• Question is too simple; if a simple(!) search (search but not super search; a search with 15 results I wouldn't consider "easy",too) would have brought the right answer and if I feel like this is wasting my time.
• Bad formatting; like using a pre-Tag and then write looooooong lines

Off-topic can (sometimes) lead to interesting discussions, posting in the wrong place or forgetting the code-Tags can happen to initiates and is OK.

On the other hand I have the feeling that some monks vote somwhat randomly (maybe according to their current feelings about life in general and their own life in particular *g*)

I think you are right that there should be some kind of feedback to help the poster figuring out what was wrong. A /msg in the chatterbox would definetly be the right way. I could imagine a little textfield right beside the ++ and -- buttons where you could type a quick comment. Of course this would uglyfy the layout...

Regards

Stefan K