Like you, I have frequently been baffled by the voting patterns of others. But then, I suppose that others may have been baffled my mine. I don't think I upvoted any of the bad nodes you quoted, but I do look at "worst nodes" for anything I regard as "unfair" downvoting. I do upvote nodes that have been downvoted for no reason apparent to me, especially "thank you"s, as I regard worst nodes as highlighting what should not be done. I don't put "thank you" in that category. But I judge each on its merits, and would guess that I upvote about 20% of entrants in Worst Nodes.

Don't, however, be baffled at your XP increasing when you haven't written anything new. I suspect I'm not alone in doing some learning at week-ends. The problem I am solving has usually been solved before, and I will upvote helpful nodes, no matter how old they may be. This may be what you are seeing.

Most of us would not be here if we were not naturally helpful. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that not to extend to voting patterns. "OK, it's bad, but not that bad" may be incentive for some to upvote out of generosity, and I, for one, would hate to discourage that generosity which has been so profitable to me. Update: I entirely agree that I would not encourage such upvoting. But I would understand it and would not deter it lest I also deter displays of generosity that make this site so valuable. /update

"Deserves death? I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."

I am equally baffled at some failures to upvote. Some of the best stuff I have written (IMO) has a reputation of zero. Against that, some very ordinary stuff is close to the top of my nodes ranked by reputation, I suspect purely because it was written near Christmas when the site was slack. What goes around comes around.

I think the time to act is when the voting patterns discourage the sorts of nodes most of us want too see. While I share many of your frustrations, I don't see evidence that this is encouraging bad or discouraging good nodes. The gods may see it differently.

Regards,

John Davies