Maybe because that way it just might incite people to read all the nodes in a thread?

If you don't have too many nodelets displayed, for any reasonable active thread your favourite browser should have a keyboard shortcut that jump to end of page (ctrl-end in Mozilla), and there you'll find the vote button.

Thinking about this a bit more, my HTML fu isn't brilliant, but I'm pretty sure you can associate a keypress with a specific form element. Something like ctrl-shift-v would move the focus to the vote button.

In fact, all the voting widgets should be at the bottom: the voting radio buttons should be at the end of the node, not the beginning, because it's only after you've read a node that you can decide which way, if any, you want to vote. But I take no credit for this observation, many people have noted this discrepancy.

Hm. Those monks that do not want to read nodes on the thread won't read them even if there is no "Vote" buttons at all. Why we sacrifice usabilty for trying to enforce people (probably without success) to read replies when they just want to express their opinion on the original topic of a thread?

Next. I have 11 nodelets configured. The usual set of Daily Best, Weekly Best, Chatterbox, CPAN, XP, keyword, voting etc. Is that "too many"? But most of the time the nodelets' column is longer than the content column and I need to pgdn to the "Vote" button. Or ever drag on a scrollbar.

And last. About voting widgets. Most of the monks are nowadays equiped with a mouse and it's equally easy for them to click radio buttons located anywhere on the screen. Think of it, really. You read with eyes from top to bottom. You act with a mouse pointer which is rarely located where you currently look.

I'm all for another "Vote" button at the top of the pages.

Then it would be even lazier if the radio button had some javascript that counted the vote when choosing ++ or --.

I'am fine with the need to scroll down to the dephts of a node:
Mind you, even though lazyness be a virtue,

Monastery life still is all about exercise. - Sören

The scenario? It's a great post and has elicited a lot of answers, so I read through them all without voting so I can allocate my votes exactly where I 'need' to. Having got to the bottom I scroll back up again apportioning my votes. Then I have to scroll all the way down just to click the 'vote' button. If there were a vote button at the top of the page I could just scroll back up casting my votes and vote when I got to the top.

Whenever I am in that situation I place the individual node(s) or the top node if there are a substantial number of nodes in the Personal Nodelet so that the next day when I have more votes they are the first nodes I look at. I find it to be a great temporary solution for such instances and saves me from the dilemma of trying to allocate too few votes to too many vote-worthy nodes.

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rozallin j. thompson