It is the essence of democratic and free voting that it is done only subject to your own conscience and that you never ever have to give a reason why you did it.

I thought we were an autonomous collective?

You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship!

Perlmonks is not a democracy.

I never said it is.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

Perlmonks is not a democracy.

Le duh

In real-life democratic voting, there's generally a pool of at least tens of thousands of other voters, and each one only has ONE vote to cast. The damage that any single person can do if he pointlessly or maliciously places his vote is minimal. Here, the pool of voters at any given time is maybe a few dozen, and if someone really hates your guts, he can have a significant impact on your overall rating. I don't think the comparison is terribly valid. In a democratic system, you also have a right to face your accuser.

And you just got caught with your pants down

In real life, you get one vote for each ballot measure, each office ... same as here, one vote per node, fair and democratic

XP isn't life or death, you aren't accused of anything, and when you vote for president/ballots, the ballots don't get to face you.

Turning a one second barometer into a bureaucracy is bat-guano-insane-o

And no, a single voter cannot have a significant impact on your overall rating, see Voting/Experience System

In real life, you get one vote for each ballot measure, each office ... same as here, one vote per node, fair and democratic

Partially true. You get to have *at most one* vote per node. But I cannot vote on every node - I only get a limited number of votes per day. And some people get more; some people get less. That's not the case in real life (well, at least not for public offices). We've done away with the "number of votes scales with the amount of taxes you pay" quite some time ago.

I seldomly vote, and don't give a rats ass about XP. I don't care much at all about Perlmonks voting and XP system, just don't try to compare it to "real life". It doesn't compare.

That depends very much how recently you joined prior to causing someone to have a voting vendetta against you. If you don't have a lot of points and your up against someone who does you've got no chance. Infact a lot of MMO games online have nooby protection for this very reason, if this site is intended to emulate a game then perhaps such a protection would be wise, it might prevent noobies getting quickly into negative figures and then throwing abuse at everyone like you-know-who.

Says the person posting anonymously. If I can't impact your rating, then why aren't you posting on your account? You're voiding your own argument.

And yes, you do get one vote per office, but I notice that that still means you can't vote against the same person multiple times per day. And it isn't retroactive - you can't go back in time and vote in every previous election he's ever been in either.