@ChristainRau ... I think this is a philosophy difference between you and I. Everyone can vote as they please. I have no worries about it. To me there are actually three voting levels. First is an upvote for a good answer. The second is a downvote for a bad answer. The third is a null vote ... meaning you don't vote because it was good or bad. If you feel something needs work, then discuss how it could be.

@ChristainRau ... It seems to me you vote to the negative to denote something which just needs some work. If this is what you are doing, then I don't think you realize that it is demotivating. Why should I work on something to make it better when I've done what I can with it? If I've missed the gist of the question, then point out that I have.

@ChristianRau ... This is one of the reasons I haven't been posting answers as much on M&TV as much, because it seems people like to downvote for seemingly stupid reasons. I don't know if it's you or others, but it seems to happen a lot. People chose to downvote when the third voting option would do. This is a separate reason why I wanted to become a moderator, so that maybe, just maybe, I can influence others to make better voting decisions.

@ChristianRau ... This and the fact that people would rather see an ID question closed rather than help a newbie understand how to write a better question. People don't even give a new person a chance to come back and add information to their question before they chose to close an ID question. Just because you don't like a question type (IE: ID question), doesn't mean it's an unworthy question.

@Paulster2 Oh, I don't think our philosophies disagree here at all. I go by exactly the same philosophy. I just guess our thresholds are different. Your answer just needed enough work to be bad in its unimproved form for me.

@Paulster2 I disagree that it is demotivating, it motivates to improve the answer. If you really have done everything you could, then why should I refrain from downvoting if I still think it's insufficient and if you yourself say you don't see a way to further improve it.

@Paulster2 I pointed out (in a constructive comment) in which way you have. You only gave a recap of how totems are supposed to work but didn't adress the problems expressed in the question.

@ChristianRau ... And that is your right and your opinion. I'm not refuting you that right.

@Paulster2 Oh I disargee with that, people don't really like to vote at all, let alone downvote. I could agree about the close-voting however.

@ChristianRau ... But people do jump on bandwagons, especially when it's a user with a high point count or a moderator.

@ChristianRau ... and no, I don't think this is the case here.

@Paulster2 Then you should have adressed that in your moderator speech, since I guess "I'm against downvotes" would give you a large voting bonus, especially from new users. ;-P

I'm not against downvotes, not whatsoever. I'm for the better use of downvotes.

I reserve downvotes for when I believe the answer is actually a bad answer. If you believe this was a case of a bad answer, than so be it.

@Paulster2 True, and I won't deny that I could use some improvement in this regard myself. However, I don't agree that something inappropriate should not be close-voted immediately. If it improves it can always be retracted/reopened. But bad stuff has to be tackled immediately, even if accompanied by constructive help for improvement.

@Paulster2 Oh, unfortunately I really do. Rest assured that I also don't downvote neutral stuff, but only things that I deem either bad, inappropriate, or just not adressing the actual question sufficiently enough. And in this case it was the latter for me.

@ChristianRau ... As far as the moderator election goes, I think if I would have put something like "I'm against downvoting" would actually be seen as pandering for votes.

@Paulster2 Don't underestimate how many people take downvotes for something bad. In fact a candidate (not me) has been called out for having too many downvotes, which to me with my own 3:1 ratio seems pretty ridiculous. It's not a popularity contest but a serious moderator election.

@ChristianRau ... I guess we will just have a difference of opinion on things, but I've noticed that we've had that for quite some time. When you do become one of the new moderators (which I think is a given), please take into account people will look to you as a source of inspiration and guidance ... especially the new people who come to the site.

@Paulster2 Oh, I will, you'll be shocked how few ID-close votes there will suddenly be. ;-P

@ChristianRau ... Unfortunately, I do believe, like any other election, it is a popularity contest.

@ChristianRau ... No worries. I believe you will do well as a moderator :D

Nevermind, I still think you make for a good moderator, too (which, if you don't tell anyone, is the reason I voted for you in the election).

LOL! Now that surprises me and pleases me as well. And, the same can be said of me for you.

I was actually surprised they let us vote for ourselves.

On a side note, I had put you in as "write" enabled on this room ... with Christain Rau (not Napoleon) and it didn't take for some reason ... no clue what went wrong there.

@Paulster2 Well, on the other hand if you don't think you're the best choice for the job, then why should anyone else (but I shouldn't say that too loudly, I have not voted for myself, though not because I deem that a bad thing).

@Paulster2 Meh, don't know how this works. I still think it's a bit weird that chat uses a different profile (or I'm the weird one to use so many different site profiles).

@ChristianRau ... Yes, I would be completely surprised if I were to win the election. On the write-up page there was one person who was ahead of me, while you, Ankit, and Ian were ontop. If you can use that as an indicator, that is.

@ChristianRau ... I just want to say thank you for coming to this chat and conversing with me. We are all just human, even on the internet ... You are human, aren't you :-)

@Paulster2 I hope so. Too bad I don't know, but in the end who does?

@ChristianRau ... and I would agree with you that people don't like to vote either. I survive on another page here in the SE world. On there, we get a ton of traffic (22k+ visits per day) ... and very minimal voting. I have no clue how to encourage voting on the sites (+ or -).

When you become a mod, you can fix all that, right :D

@ChristianRau ... I'm going to leave you alone ... must be getting very late in Deutscheland (sp)

Or, wait, it's only going on 7pm?? there?

I've had a long day, lol!

@Paulster2 In fact I noticed that you are one of the more avid voters and I highly appreciate this, especially that you yourself appreciate voting. I think this is something the site needs to work at. There are many high-activity high-rep users which I think don't vote enough.

I think I called one of those people out on their nomination.

Been on here for a long time and only had something like 200 votes, total?

My philosophy? You've got 40 votes per day ... why not use them? I rarely vote that much, but I do like to acknowledge at least decent questions.

@Paulster2 In fact I think I must have voted on more than every 2nd post here on average. But ok, I'm probably a special case regarding site age and addictedness, I don't exect people to be up to that level of avidness, afterall other people might actually have a non-SE life.

@ChristianRau ... It seems these days I don't, that's for sure! As I've stated, I really like how SE works. It makes so much more sense than a forum, especially for getting good answers. I look at places like ask.com and read answers there and think to myself, "WHAT? ... That's not right!" LOL!

@ChristianRau ... Here it's the community at large which does most of the policing. It really is a great system.

@ChristianRau ... But then again, I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir at this point.