The "moral outrage" was not at my loss of xp, I could care less. The point was that "downvoting" a node for noting an error (encountered on this site, albeit as a result of a link to another), a genuine attempt to help, more heavily than for a sarcastic comment, which served no useful purpose, summed up the problems with the concept of the voting system. An attempt to help drew more fire than a completely non-useful post! I am not sure what other conclusion to draw from that.

As for the "Hey, some other web site is not working!" - in general, when a link from one site to another is broken, the 404 msg suggests contacting the authors of the source of the link to inform them its out of date.

So, as I could not edit the post where the link is, and I did not know that the author of the post was the webmaster at the target of the link, I thought (mistakenly apparently) that mentioning it here would allow someone with the appropriate editorial powers to a) Edit the link or b) Inform the author of the link through some mechanism (like the email address he supplied when he registered) that the link had a problem.

I could do neither of these things, so I passed the information on to those that could, and the change was effected and the problem cured. I agree it wasn't the end of the world, but still better fixed if only so that I could follow the link and read what was there, as I had originally tried to do. <p.Where's the bad? What alternative should I have taken? Kept silent? Ignored it and let someone else or many someone elses find it?

For the record, I said:

"Disciplined and controlled, attempting to help" and "despite the vast majority here for whom that is true, there are rogue elements"....

No broad brush, a carefully worded and specifically targetted expression of distaste at the use, by some, not the many, nor the intentions of the voting system.