But there's another purpose, as well. Voting for a node indicates, or should indicate, your approval of the node itself, and the items and ideas contained inside. The purpose here is to indicate that you approve of the node; if it has a high positive value, it appears on the Best Nodes list, where others can see it, and more will take notice of it. The same goes in the opposite direction, with nodes in the Worst Nodes list.

If we ask vroom to make changes to the Anonymous Monk system, I'd prefer he simply remove it, and no longer allow anonymous posting. Voting should be anonymous. There's no need for posting to be, except perhaps in the Seekers of Perl Wisdom section. But that's already been argued.

Hmmm... many well-stated and thought-out responses. Some of these lead me to clarify a bit:

I don't vote to show appoval of Monks, but to reinforce behavior of Monks, as demonstrated by their posts. Since anonymous monk doesn't care about XP or reputation, my voting an AM post up or down has little direct impact on future behavior of AM's. Indirect impact was given by at least a couple o' fine Monks.

I agree with the principle of voting the node regardless of posting Monk. But I also temper that with a bit of grace toward new Monks, to help foster the open environment we all enjoy here at the Monastery.

Several wise Monks told why they do vote on AM posts, and I respect their thinking. I don't have to agree   8^)   but I wouldn't force my approach on anyone who sees differently than I do. So... I retract my suggestion to disable voting on AM posts. In the future, I'll watch more closely for AM posts before voting. Thanks to all Monks who offered their insights.
    cheers,
    ybiC

Yes That seems to be really effective and realistic..Infact voting also shows to the monk himself that his question was appreciated or not..Also I myself got some -25 votes on single nodes but yes as I was new and didnot knew how to post without this voting how would I have improved? (this was when I was anonymus monk itself) Thanks ybic for taking it sportingly... --vnpandey

Yes That seems to be really effective and realistic..Infact voting also shows to the monk himself that his question was appreciated or not..Also I myself got some -25 votes on single nodes but yes as I was new and didnot knew how to post without this voting how would I have improved? (this was when I was anonymus monk itself) Thanks ybic for raising a very impt question. --vnpandey

Hard to say on this one...Voting on an Anonymous Monk seems wasteful, but as pointed out above it does rate the level of the post. Thus, it should stay in, but perhaps modified. Vote on the post, but it shouldn't reflect on the AM. The beatings will continue until morale raises.

--ZZamboni

I base my decision solely on the quality of the node, not who wrote it. It does not matter to me if it was written by AM, a registered user, or created by a power surge through the perlmonks.org server. :) Except vroom of course - one should never vote his down. Who knows what will happen when his script kicks in:

if ($vote=-1 and $node->{owner} eq "vroom") {
  &SendToUser($Locusts && $Plagues && $Telemarketers);
  $Users->{XP} -= (rand 50) +50;
}
[download]

:)

Won't voting it down increase the chance of the node having a fatal accident?

But I, too, am less likely to vote on an anon monk post. It has to be really good or bad for me to bother.

To be honest, I don't think any node has ever suffered a fatal accident. A few have quietly passed away under the protection of a DNR signed by the author, but none (that I know of) have been voted into extinction. Which is amazing considering the incredably low reputation of some posts. Of course, the best person to ask would be the regulator himself.

On the other hand, you could look at it from a different perspective.

Think of it this way. The Anonymous Monk is sort of an average of the people who are not involved in the perl community enough to bother getting an account. Perhaps they just have a quick question... maybe just a quick answer. What most Anonymous Monk's don't realize, but it is true, is that they represent a population of people wrather than any individual.

I pray for the day in which Anonymous Monk becomes a Saint.