I think the suggestion elsewhere regarding being able to see the total pluses and minuses for your node would be illuminating and help a little. In other words, a node with a rep of 10 might have 10 plus votes and 0 negative votes, or it could have 120 plus votes and 110 minus votes! I think a lot of it has to do with when the post was put up (most monks are clustered around -6 GMT and have few votes left by the end of the "day") as well as how deep it is. Top level posts tend to get voted on more than lower level ones, independent of quality. I mean, I have a post here which took a little work and I think is rather clever, but it has a rep of 2. Why? Because it is so nested. I have other nodes that have higher reps, but don't aren't as high a quality - but they were posted at a higher level, or posted earlier in the day, or earlier in the thread.

So, conspiracies aside (see my home node for my list of why people vote a node down) these are factors affecting the rep of a node, in my opinion:

• The quality (good advice/humor/etc.) of the post
• The quality of the posts around it. (While on the page, why not vote on all the posts and replies?)
• When it was posted (If you like it and have no votes, it will probably be buried by hundreds of other votes by the time you get more votes)
• How deep it is (People may not read deep, or may use their votes on "earlier" replies, or might think someone else has already made the post (note that often times a reply can come after a post, but appear higher on the page in the default layout))
• If a reply, how long after the original post it was made. If someone is making a reply 5 days after the original post, it is not likely to be looked at.