As I've been going around Minti today, I've noticed a few questions on Minti about voting. This has been already put into IFZ and the Voting Vault, but I thought it was worth a re-visit. I hope Clay doesn't mind me copying and pasting his words!

In regards to a question he received about someone concerned that he/she was being targeted and voted down. This is a common query, and often the people who think they are being targeted are wrong, even if they think they are... and also we discourage people trying to track down who is voting because more often than not they are wrong because it actually hasn't been targeted at all:

"To me it looks like the article has mainly 5 votes and probably a couple of 4 votes. This is not really "voting down", it is just voting reality, not everyone is should vote the same stars as everyone else (unless we all have had the same lives and experiences, and exactly the same opinions). If people were voting 1's and 2's against great advice, then there would maybe be cause for concern."

There are always cases where people may disagree with the advice, or perhaps think it would be better off in a group or a blog. I'm sure all of you have seen at least one advice that you either think is rubbish, would be better off as a comment in the Q&A, or is more appropriate in a blog.

We all think differently and thus vote differently.. it's like if we all thought the same, 100% would have voted for John Howard instead of Kevin Rudd; or Al Gore instead of George Bush.

I do regularly check the activity list to see whether people have been targeting others or trying to game the system. There hasn't been any thing like that lately, and I have emailed members previously about this matter who I thought perhaps may have either been targeting or trying to game the system with voting.

In regards to non-members voting, non-members have always been allowed to vote. People may only think that this is only a recent phenomenon. (ie, they think there has been a rise in non-members voting). Previously we didn't show that non-members were voting. We have a lot of visitors to our site who prefer to lurk around at the advice and don't become a member. So for those who think there is some kind of conspiracy and that the non-member votes are real members trying to game the system you are probably wrong. If you have proof, let us know.

As for former members, they are obviously allowed to vote in any way they choose. They may have left Minti due to conspiracies or they just didn't have enough time to participate on Minti any more due to their hectic schedules.