Voting should in my opinion be done on the nodes, and *your* perception of the quality of them. It shouldn't be based on what someones rank is - especially not something like these ranks, that only give a hint that the person might know more or less.

Saints make mistakes, and AnonyMonk might correct them. I dare say that it is often the other way around, but it happens. :) How would you vote then?

And how will you ever learn to determine the quality of an answer, if all you have to go on is "Master X said so"?

If you have no own opinion, save the vote for a node where you do. That is *my* opinion. :)

I don't think you should decide your votes from the rank of the poster. Decide from the contents of the post instead.

Remember that anyone can become a saint given enough time, just by voting on other nodes. (Could even become saint from downvoting enough nodes.)

But then... my own "best-scoring" nodes happen to be really trivial, and just scored high because they happened to appear early on a thread that got a lot of readers (because it was such easy reading, I guess).

I thought for a while that the ratio of XP / number of postings might be a good measure, but then I found a friar with only 14 postings -- maybe this person has done a lot of voting, becuase the posts I looked at didn't seem that strong. (Okay, I didn't look at all of them, but I think I saw enough that this person could have had at least one post on the "best nodes of all time" list... but didn't.)

Good point. An example would be Merlyn as well. I see him getting many points on nothing in particular

Do people vote because of who he is?

One of my best scoring nodes was a coding issue. But I still got quite a few points on trivial stuff as well

I agree with the others. Titles don't always mean what they say. How many managers, directors, VPs, and or Presidents have we thought to be complete idiots?

If you post enough and vote enough, you can become high leveled. I myself am heading to Level 6 and I would not call myself a talented programmer

Beides seeing the titles might induce voting just to get rank rather than voting on the value of the post

to learn such lessons can be painful,
and yet the knowledge is worth it's price....

Beware of monks bearing platitudes,
they're just after your XP ;)

--

Brother Frankus. ( Nearly a Pontiff and still a simpleton ;)

¤

While it is true that most higher level monks are very experienced and knowledgeable, having less experience points does NOT mean less perl experience and that their nodes should be considered for voting any differently.

Even if experience points meant real experience, why should this affect how you vote ? Though there are no guidelines on when to upvote or downvote a node, but one thing is for certain, you're voting on the node, not the person posting it.

tstock

--
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul,
Ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
Uzg-Microsoft-ishi amal fauthut burguuli.

So quit kicking me in the pants everyone! Once was enough.

Who are you talking to? Nobody downvoted your node twice. If the node's rep is at -10 that means there were 10 more people who downvoted it than upvoted it.

If 50 people see a node and think it's just barely worth a ++ then the node will have a 50 rep. If 20 people see an absolutely incredible node and think it's worth as many upvotes as possible, it will still only have a 20 rep. I haven't heard anyone claim a node's rep is in any way indicative of its quality.

Your suggestion was completely valid, so don't worry if you lose a few xp by bringing it up. Better to have a good discussion and reduce an imaginary number slightly than to increase that imaginary number while not learning anything.

I typically only look at the Newest Nodes node, skim it, look for Node names that jump out at me, things that look interested, etc... on this particular page I would love if there was some designation of user "level"

"Why?" you ask ... because if my time is sort, I don't really want to spend it looking over "trivial" questions from newbies. That may seem harsh, but it's true. sometimes I'm in the mood to be helpful, and read very basic questions and give very basic answers. But other times I'm here for me -- I want to read things that are challenging and interesting and weren't posted here under a different name 3 days ago. The simple truth is that, on average, nodes posted by people with high XP tend to be of a higher caliber then people with low XP (the nature of the moderation system system basicly dictates it will allways be that way.)

Should people vote based on XP? absolutely not. But letting people pick which nodes deserve their valuable time based on the XP of the poster is just a valid an idea as letting them pick based on the Node Tension.

By having some form of indication (such as an XP graph) is wrong.

A reader can't help but be biased, overlooking an acolyte's post for a (seemingly) better pontiff's.

A reader would also have less faith in Saint So-and-so if they had an error.

No offense, but just because a user has a high rank doesn't mean they should have prescendence. Hypothetically speaking, suppose a Perl 6 programmer recently joined, his or her PerlMonks level would be low, being a "newbie," but does that accurately reflect his or her knowledge?

By having any publicized indicator of your rank would do a disservice to all monks.

John J Reiser
newrisedesigns.com