That said, there are some things in common that many users here will share that may affect their voting habits. Here are the ones that affect mine:

Any massive collection of info, such as PerlMonks, becomes unwieldy and useless as time goes on if there is no way to move the good long term stuff from the good short term stuff (and the junk-at-anytime stuff). Thus, in general, I only vote up posts that I would want to find in a search a year from now. I leave unvoted posts that are not of general use. (many replies an author makes to a reply to his/her thread fall in this category, as does a lot of humor). Downvoted is anything that can be answered via a FAQ, or running with use strict or -w. Security errors are downvoted, unless they've updated the node to mention it.

Others may hold the virtual "Bar" higher, so that what I'm content to see as a 0 rep post they'd see as a -2.

Ways to improve chances of getting ++

1. Always run with use strict, -w
2. Always provide sample data and sample output, and the exact error that resulted.
3. Always list the thoughts you've had in trying to solve it.
4. Always read the documention of the functions.

1. Reinvent a common module, particularly CGI.pm
2. Ask any question in the perlfaq, or one that shows up at least 5 times by using PerlMonks Search.
3. Post your code in PRE tags rather than CODE tags. Make sure you have lines at least 250 characters long.
4. Answer a question with blatantly (see #2) incorrect cargo-cult code