Don't take the voting too serious. For the poster it is a good indication that he made a mistake or was too harsh or too cryptic... Or (in the case of many positive votes) that he provided a very helpful answer. Ok, in reality it also depends on time of day and whether you are first poster ;-)

In that way it helps monks fine tune their answers to conform to an ideal recognised by the majority of monks. In the case of perlmonks this system works quite well