On the other hand, I sometimes browse old nodes by Merlyn, Tilly, Tye and other Perl masters. And if I have extra votes I sometimes use them to vote the old posts up.

My point is, voting up or down on old posts can be rational. And if my late up votes cancel out someone else's snipering, then there is no harm done.

Of course there is no harm done anyway, because the whole point of voting, in my opinion, is only so that a poster can get feedback. If I post something and ten minutes later it has gone negative then I ought to reexamine what I wrote and fix it. I learn more from intelligent downvotes of my posts than I do from upvotes, not that I don't appreciate the upvotes.