It seems to me that voting, even if it is based on spite, is a fantastic way for the users of the forum to really control the content of the forum itself. It helps moderators when it comes to "who to cut", and new people when it comes to "what to read".

Overall, no matter what is the controlling factor, things will tend to boil down to 1)a person who likes the post will give it a positive vote 2)a person who dislikes the post will give it a negative one. This even if the reason for liking or disliking the node is as simple as "I didn't like his imbedded font" or "I just spilled scalding hot coffee on my lap".

So upvoting a node is your way of keeping the content you like in the forum. The first paragraph of the node Voting/Experience System is what really swayed me to this view, and while I have not had a chance to upvote or downvote as of yet, I still believe its a good system. =)

In reply to Re^2: Why upvote a node? by Kzin
in thread Why upvote a node? by FoxtrotUniform

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.