I'm sad to say it, but as of late I am losing my faith in the voting system here in the Monastery.

I never had much faith in the voting system. On average, I spend just a few votes a day, and many days, I don't vote at all. I vote ++ for excellent nodes, nodes that learned me something new about Perl, and good rebuffals of nodes full of gibberish. Sadly, I don't encounter many nodes worthy of ++. I vote -- for nodes that don't answer the question, or are just plainly wrong. But while there are many nodes that fall in those categories, I only -- a few of them (or else, I'd spend all my votes each day) - most of the time, I can't bother. But I'm always surprised how high some of those nodes full of drivel score. Specially if they are first replies.

If you game the system, and want to get high node reputation, be the first, or one of the first, to reply to a question. It doesn't matter if it's useful - just spotting the OP leaves out a "use strict" (regardless whether it matters for the problem the OP is having) is good for many points. Then frontpage the node, because we all know that if a thread is frontpaged, nodes in that thread, specially first nodes, get more votes than posts in a thread that isn't frontpaged.