I've been on and off E2 for a while now, and I expect to keep popping in for years to come. It's a cool site filled with cool people. But I think you all have gotten one thing wrong. You need to give your users a 'hook' right from the start.
Hindsight may change my mind, but I think I would enjoy this site more if I could vote. And I think if I enjoyed this site more, I'd spend more time noding. I know that you might not see an increase in Poot nodes as a big incentive, but bear with me. The problem is that the thing that would (probably) do the most to increase my noding output will only appear after I have inured myself to noding without that thing.
Maybe this was intentional. If new noders need a hook to become interested, you don't want them here. Maybe noding should be its own reward. But if you really want to increase the number of new noders who stick around, you should give them the vote. This would make the whole experience more engaging, and would be educational too. Let me explain.
When I look at the New Writeups sidebar, I see all kinds of things. I see poetry of various quality. I see daylogs and dreamlogs. I see 20 page essays of the history and practice of underwater basket weaving. I see things that look like Wikipedia entries, and things that look like Jargon File entries. I can only see one of three things about these writeups. I can see if the writeup was deleted. I can see if the writeup was C!ooled. And I can see nothing. I see nothing a lot. I gather that the only way to see what reputation a writeup gets is by voting on it. I have no idea how well the average daylog is received. I can see how well my daylogs were received, but I don't know if I'm above or below average, except by counting C!ools. So I won't know if people are having a problem with my writing style until after I've posted 20 writeups. I can't see if the encyclopedia entries get more or less than the poetry. All I can do is node random stuff, and see whether or not I can do that sort of thing in a way that most noders like. If I can't, I don't know if that's because that I can't write that sort of writeup well, or if everybody hates that sort of content on E2.
So, it would be motivational and educational to give new noders 5 votes -- or maybe one vote per node, for their first 5 nodes. Or maybe even give them 5 'null votes', that don't count as a for or against the writeup, but just let you see the score. It's demotivating to have one of E2s biggest features hidden from you for 20 long nodes.
I see all the FAQs that say that newbies shouldn't node about E2. I hope they were all just kidding.