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

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