It has nothing to do with vote budget, but I've often wished that I could see the various votes on a node prior to reading it and/or voting on it, and that this feature was configurable in user settings. See votes all the time, see votes only after voting, never see votes. Yes, I know that I could see some votes this way so long as they made it to Best/Worst nodes, but what about those that didn't?

Whether or not other votes impact the way I vote, if I choose to, is beside the point. It is more a matter of content filtering. Sometimes the number of votes tell you something that the title of the node does not. Isn't this effectively what occurs when you are browsing "Best/Worst nodes?" You're viewing nodes that people felt positive enough to vote for or against. Perhaps they agreed, Perhaps they found it useful, or (unfortunately) maybe they just like who posted it...

It could affect whether or not I choose to read a long post, and it may give me an additional way to judge the reliability of a response. Not a definitive way, but one nonetheless. There are lots of nodes, and I don't have time to read them all. So I figure a "rough" ranking is sometimes better than no ranking (A broken watch is exactly right twice a day, and one that is 10 minutes off never is, yet which is more useful?). Sometimes I'll read a node solely based on the person who posted it, or even because of a person who responded.

I find that I sometimes will use this approach when browsing through user-submitted book/movie reviews on other sites. Sometimes, I find myself wanting to focusing on the extreme good, and the extreme bad reviews, and skip the middle-of-the-road comments. I also see it similar to viewing survey results without ever taking part in the survey.

I don't think I get any more value from seeing this information once I've voted, than before. It just tells me how others felt about the same node. At that point, generally speaking, I don't really care how others voted. I've already read it, formed an opinion, and cared enough to vote. I will likely be more interested in what other people had to say rather than vote at that point.

Update: I've thought about this posting several times since writing it, and I haven't read anything since that's changed my opinion, but being a bit critical, I think I mispresented my position and may have given the impression that the reputation was sufficiently useful to use by itself as a sole indicator on the value of a node. While I believe reputation can have value, I think that value is lessened when taken in isolation of other criteria.

I primarily browse Perlmonks through Recently Active Threads, and use whatever information is available to determine whether or not I'm going to look at a node, much less vote on it. While this may be slightly unfair to judge a node by it's title, author, number of responses, and identity of those who respond, I don't really care.

I have a finite amount of time in which to browse the site, and that doesn't allow my the luxury of reading everything. I view the reputation as one more potential criteria that could be useful.

An isolated reputation alone tells you one story, and not the whole story, however a reputation taken in the context of a particular thread may have value. Nodes in topics that attract a lot of interest (and often responses) tend to have higher reputations than nodes in niche topics, so comparing nodes in different threads seems useless to me. Witin the context of a thread however, I find that it can serve as a general indicator of perceived value. How did individuals who were interested in the subject matter rate the node... that sort of thing.

Just a few parting thoughts on this topic, since I don't expect to author many more (if any) nodes on this subject again.