I disagree. Giving XP for votes encourages new users to start voting. As you rise in ranks, XP becomes less important (for most, I'm pretty sure at least - especially as it makes less and less difference to the total) but by then you have gotten into the habit of voting.

Of course people vote when they shouldn't, but generally, good nodes rise and bad nodes doesn't just the same. The votes on frontpaged nodes and the first posts are another matter however. ;-)

I'd like to see voting scores as a way to compare posts to each other. If you search and get several responses, it would be nice to think that there is a correlation between the votes and how good the answer is. So if you had 20 responses you could say well that ones average vote is higher so its at least more likely (thoeriticaly) to be a better, more thought out answer. I suppose now you have the same thing, but people can only vote ++ or --, so you don't get a feel for quality, just overall weather it okay or not.

I think that at least removing XP from the equation would stop people form ++'ing just because and only vote when the post realy screams "I'm good!' or "i suck!"

___________
Eric Hodges

And I see voting as a way to mark for myself whether I've seen that post or not. Sometimes when really interesting threads come by I'll just vote on every single node in the thread so that I can come back later and notice if there is anything new.

The problem with your theory of post quality corresponding exactly to magnitude of sum of votes for a node is sub-optimal. It may be, for instance, that Bob posted the same reponse or quesiton Jon is about to two years ago on Christmas Eve, and nobody noticed so it got no readership nor votes to speak of. Wheras Jon, posts on a dreary winter Sunday afternoon (or Friday afternoon around 3-5PM ;-).

--
I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.