It occurred to me that preventing XP loss from having your root PMD node downvoted would increase the motivation for people to post "Your idea sucks" replies instead. And that caused me to think that people should be more concerned about having their ideas ridiculed than about losing a few imaginary points. Even posting a really stupid idea to PMD is unlikely to cost you more points than you'd earn with just a bit of typical PM contributing (posting a couple decent nodes and casting some votes).
Then the idea of more "Your idea sucks" replies endeared me to the idea, somewhat.
But I like that the posting of poorly thought-out suggestions (especially regarding down-voting) has been effectively discouraged (by spontaneous community concensus). It is my impression that PMD root nodes get down-voted more because they tend to not be well thought-out, not because people disagree with a proposal.
In the end, I personally rejected this feature change mostly because I suspect the primary result of such a change would be to make PMD a dumping ground for whiney complaining about things like how some other monk treated one, etc. I don't think it would result in an increase in useful discussion. PMD used to be so often a dumping ground for whiney complaining about down-voting that many long-time members don't even bother to read PMD, it appears.
By the OP's own admission and demonstration, the advantage would be to allow the OP to post a PMD node without having to "feel silly". I think feeling silly is perfectly appropriate in the described situation and it is a reasonable amount of deterrence, not something we should be saving people from.
If you want to open a discussion, feel strongly enough about it to overcome feeling silly for posting anonymously or to do a good enough job that you can proudly post it under your registered name. Discussions work so much better when the person opening the discussion puts some effort into it.
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