I'm not certain that it would be bad for people to be
able to see reputation before voting. I do agree it
would be quite possible for people to abuse this by
allowing it to influence their votes. However, it is
already possible to jump on the bandwagon to some degree,
by checking out
Best Nodes and
Worst Nodes (and
why is it that 'Best' encourages you not to add a vote
just because others have, but 'Worst' doesn't? hmm...).
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).