Soo, where's the spirit of help, the spirit of who want's to share knowledge. I think that some monks need to know that is not in any place that we can find knowledge for free, actually in most place we need to pay a lot for any knowledge. PerlMonks is a great, greate and grate place to get, share and create knowledge about Perl.

I know that we have a lot of good monks, but somes are around the monastery just taking care about XP, -- & ++.

For me XP can be banned from the monastery, or some new policy need to be created. Like remove the winning of XP on --, [...]

In the past I've been informed (in the PM "cb") that bringing up the issue of XP is most unwelcome and especially so among the gods who make managerial decisions here. They are from what I gather, sick and tired of the discussions about this and most disinclined to pay any attention to proposals about changing anything. The grumpiest of the gods can in fact get downright surly when the topic is brought up.

Nonetheless I welcomed this posting as an opportunity to voice my opinion in a different way (I have said like things in the cb on several occasions) and to a slightly different audience (and with persistence, for the record). I strongly support this OP's basic contention which is that the XP system's connection to downvoting is not any sort of enhancement to life in the Monastery.

I've never gotten a defense of the current system that was convicing (even less so since they have usually been delivered with considerable spleen). So, my contention is simply: those who are very (apparently) invested in the status quo are simply wrong. So there.

Downvoting without posting an explanation or discussion -- any sort of feedback of any length, as long as it's not grossly disrepectful (assuming the article being downvoted wasn't grossly disrespectful to begin with), is utterly without value, in my view. It serves no good purpose. What it does do is open up the Monastery to a host of human illnesses: downvoting as personal vendetta against someone we dislike; downvoting merely to acquire XP, downvoting as a way of venting aggression accumulated because of outside factors in one's life. I am quite sure that there are Monks engaging in all of these sick practices.

If one is downvoted without explanation -- particularly if the posting being so treated was code or primarily a contributive rather than argumentative node -- it merely serves to create a cause for future reluctance to share. Where is the value in this? I see none. No-one has ever explained to me in a sincere manner where the value is in this. Some, OTOH, contend that the current Monastery protocol is to /msg (privately communicate to via "MonkMail") the poster when one does a downvote on them, explaining why. This is fine, if the person doing the voting prefers, but who ever made this a protocol commandment? I don't recall being asked. I 'opt-out', thanks. I will post my reasons for downvoting publicly, thanks, unless my previous experience indicates that this person prefers a private reply, or my criticisms are of a highly sensitive or potentially personal nature (or would be perceived as such) and by going "private" I can help the other party save face or avert the possibility of bad feelings on the part of other readers.

Returning finally to the issue of downvoting and XP, I strongly feel (although have no ideas what the implementation details would be like) that no XP should be awarded for downvoting, if no follow-up node has been posted previous to the vote being cast. This would mean people who changed their minds about posting a response after voting would not get XP for doing so; tough luck. No biggie. People who want XP primarily for voting on other people's nodes need to cool their jets anyway. Throwing stones shouldn't be the primary activity on Perlmonks -- there are already plenty of sites around the 'Net available for those who are into that.

-- 
Now, 2004: The 3 least meaningful terms in online jargon are:
  troll   flame   rant
These used to mean something; but then they were highjacked by the kind of
inferior intellects who, when faced with a more erudite opponent employing
superior arguments (or simply hanging in there with a disagreeable
contention), abuse these terms as merely another form of name-calling. ;-)