This is something that is rampant right now on HN. As someone who writes his own new content for this specific community, the voting rings are just big turn off. I dont participate in them, and will not upvote when a fellow engineer asks me to do so (disclaimer: I have done it three times, but stopped because it felt wrong). I do, however, don't think that it will ever be stopped. It just pushes me to write better stuff and to improve my use of analytics.