<p>CV's a democracy of a kind, so many standard political points arise. The first lessons in politics include learning that many other people are very confident in telling you should be voting this way or you shouldn't be voting that way. Excuse me: they're my votes, or not. Within the rules, I vote as I like. (I don't impute or infer attempts to offend, naturally.) </p>

<p>Here are some of my views: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>I won't vote for anything I have not the time to read. </p></li>
<li><p>I won't vote for anything I don't think serves the long-term interests of the forum. </p></li>
<li><p>I won't even necessarily vote for anything I think is worth answering or commenting on. Sometimes, indeed often, the question is lousy, but it is worth trying to produce a good answer for the sake of the forum. </p></li>
<li><p>When people want to focus on how or whether reputation can be enhanced, their emphasis is in the wrong place.   </p></li>
</ol>

<p>CV is a success, mostly, but I think the central problem remains one that is more or less inevitable and has been pointed out many times. Many questions are really rather poor. They suffer from one or more of </p>

<p><strong>a</strong>. The poster's weak understanding of statistics. </p>

<p><strong>b</strong>. Excessive focus on immediate details (e.g. a particular data set or a particular research question) which reduces the general or long-term value of the question. </p>

<p><strong>c</strong>. The poster's lack of effort in learning or reading. </p>

<p><strong>d</strong>. The poster's failure to understand how CV works best. This can even apply to people who have been on the list for some years, yet ask the same vague, cryptic or over-general questions, or the same kinds of questions, again and again. 
Some of these people are seemingly indifferent to the evidence that they are way out of line (as shown by voting, answers, comments). </p>

<p>Of these, <strong>a</strong> is often the main reason the question is being asked and <strong>b</strong> is the way it arises. So, these weaknesses are understandable but they don't often lead me to feel that an upvote is deserved. <strong>c</strong> is even more of a reason for not upvoting. Conversely, <strong>d</strong> is a reason for downvoting! </p>

<p>On the whole, the tone of CV is frank yet civil and positive, and that's a good thing. But there is a certain timidity about very firmly discouraging outlier posters and/or removing very weak questions. </p>

<p>There are many strong technical questions too, naturally. </p>
