Just as we put up code we have problems with so that it may be improved by the community, we often put up ideas about the monastery itself, bringing new ideas that could improve it.

Something which would be personally useful, and I believe others may find it so, is a total of monks you have voted for. This would only allow you to see who you voted for, not who voted for you, so it shouldn't create bad feeling or popularity contests.

The purpose I see this used for is so that as a monk one can track which other monks write messages that you find worthy of a ++. For example, if I find that I've given a plethora of ++s to Ovid, I might make sure that I read all of his nodes because I personally find them more worthwhile. Or if I find a new monk whom was been getting a good amount, then that is a monk to watch and read.

In a perfect world, we could read every node and every response. However I know that personally I can get to maybe 80% of the root nodes, and of am not likely to go back later to see if there is something new if I hadn't added to that particular discussion.

These facts, and the fact that the monastery is still growing, lead me to wish for a way to focus my reading to help me catch those that I feel add greatly, as reflected that I ++ed them. This is not a replacement for browsing newest nodes, but an addition so that I don't miss later additions to nodes that I might otherwise not have time to add.

Our monk level gives a good indication of how someone contributes to the community, which is more then just straight Perl knowledge. But we still have individual preferences. One example is IO - I love his terse and correct answers, they make me work and figure out the why myself, which leaves me remembering it better, but perhaps some other monk prefers more verbose answers, and has voted that way. We would be expanding the functionality of the voting system to allow each monk to track their own preferences.

I can see that it would definitely add to the size of the databases, but I feel it has merit. Enough merit? That's up to others to decide - I just came up with the idea. {grin}

Comments? Other (better) ways to do achieve the goal? I'd love to here thoughts and criticisms on the idea.

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...