I wholeheartedly agree on voting guidelines. Here are mine:

1. Is this post helpful to the Perl Monks community?
   • if ($Post == $Question){
       'Is it a thoughtful question? Well-presented? Does it give a chance to show off some cool feature of Perl?'
     }
   • if ($Post == $AnswerToQuestion){
       'Was it helpful to all users?';
       'Was it cool and/or simple to understand?';   'Does it point to a useful module on CPAN?';
     }
   • if ($Post == $Suggestion){
       'Do I like it and want to show support for the idea?';
       'Is it well-reasoned and appreciatively requested?';
     }
   • if ($Post == $RunningThread or $Post == $SemiFlameWar){
       'Does this post address a useful programming issue ("Will at least some users benefit from this discussion (even if it is a bit heated)?")';
       # Arguments are not bad, if they address a meaningful topic
     }
   • if ($Post =~ /Clever | Witty | Entertaining/) { $Vote++ }
2. Is this post helpful to a specific member of the Perl Monks community?
   • A thoughtful answer to a question (reasonably correct), especially if it makes a serious attempt to be idiomatic.
   • Corrected code in the post (supplying working code as part of the answer to a problem)
3. Did this post require a considerable amount of effort?
   • Benchmarking to compare two approaches
   • Long, thoughtful/thought-provoking
   • Analysis of/rewriting a large piece of code
   • Anything obviously time-consuming

Negative votes are rare from me, and only if the poster:

• Was unjustifiably hostile or negative
• Misrepresents someone's position, just to make him/her look bad
• Is excessively arrogant (we are all somewhat arrogant, or we wouldn't deign to post code here at all ;-)

I've only been hanging around here for a couple weeks, but it feels like home, because of the quality and community we foster. Voting allows us to reward those who provide useful, meaningful content. I try to use my votes to reward those who make Perl Monks into a quality place of help and learning.

Russ

I've only been hanging around here for a couple weeks, but it feels like home

Amen to that. I really enjoy this place, and I almost feel like I know a lot of monks personally. Very nice community.

--ZZamboni

Some good could come from seeing reputation before/without voting. As athomason mentioned, curiosity is possible where one does not feel qualified to vote. An example: I know nothing about a topic and see two posts which contradict each other; seeing the reputation could tell me a bit about which one fellow monks (who hopefully do know the topic) consider better.

Another reason was brought up by turnstep in RE:RE:Keep the vote XPs. Don't incrase vote #.. I think that higher monks, at least, could be trusted with the power to affect over- and under-valued nodes (if they wanted it--seeing reputation should be an option).

Oh. yes. You are quite right -- if one can't/doesn't vote at all, which of two contradictory posts is to be believed?
I am still wistfully hanging on to the idea that if one doesn't know which is right and which is wrong, one really ought not vote. Thus, the 'abstain' option...

But of course, this is no help at all if you are an AM and are just looking for the right answer. Well, here's a possibility for use and abuse -- allow AM's to see reputation of all posts. They can't vote anyway. That way, if monks are particularly in need of seeing reputation, they could log out and view the post. This might discourage people from checking reputation obsessively before they vote -- it's a pain in the ass to log out and log in over and over again.

Ahh, but run two browsers at once, one cookie-fied, one not, and it becomes quite easy to abuse...and don't think for a second that there aren't people out there thinking of the same thing :-)

Finally, we could use common sense. If one of the two posts is by merlyn, it's probably the one to heed. Reputation consists of more than just a little number in a database somewhere.

e-mail neshura

I don't think that people are going to let the current reputation of a post alter their voting decision too much. As I pointed out in a another post there is much more to be gained from always showing the reputation then the risk of slightly skewed poll results. Our system isn't all that scientific anyway, after all a post could have a low reputation because it dates back to the days when fewer people came here.

sure, why not...+, -, o, and a for abstain. of course, it starts to get confusing and take up screen real estate...if you combine this with that other post that said we ought to rip off /. with interesting/insightful/etc., then a drop down box will be necessary.

e-mail neshura