Ask HN: Do you upvote direct replies?
When someone replies to my comment on HN, I usually upvote it, even if I disagree with it. It's the only signal I can give that: "yes, I read it but I don't care enough to reply right this second." I feel like this gives the author some feedback that their comment was appreciated, even if nobody ever replies.
I don't usually see upvotes deep in comment threads, but sometimes I do. Am I the only one doing this, or do other people do this too?
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126 comments
| 96 points
| on HN
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Also I feel like Hackernews doesn't really push for prompt replies anyways. I don't comment expecting replies, so I likewise don't need confirmation on whether somebody read my comment or not
> never
Choose one
That seems like a poor idea. Reactions incentivize them to post more of the same, knowing with reasonable confidence that the comment was read. Low value content should not be given the time of day, which will leave those posting low value content to start to wonder if anyone is even seeing it, eventually boring them.
Upvote = funny, downvote = informative is the standard approach.
Thank goodness this is not actually how most people use up/downvotes.
When you receive no feedback is when you are left to think that nobody saw it. That's when you grow bored and eventually quit.
You're the first person I've ever seen to say to downvote informative content, and that's a very good thing, because if everyone behaved like that, that behaviour would be like dumping fuel into the fire that is post-facticism and ignorance on the internet.
For what reason would you want to provide analytics data to a creator when you believe their content is "bad"? As I said before, the reason one will post on HN is to have their content seen by an audience. After all, if your intent was simply to write, why not open up notepad.exe instead? The reality is that users come to HN for the audience it provides. Logically, if someone is creating low value content, you want to leave them believing that no audience is seeing their content, not feed them with information. Don't feed the trolls, as the saying goes.
There is no actual meaning given to the buttons. No rules which state that you can press them only under exacting circumstances. Paul Graham himself says that they have no meaning and you are free to use them as you please, asking only that you do not press a button until you have genuinely read the content associated with it, corroborating the idea that it is meant to be an analytics system of sorts. As you have even pointed out yourself, interpretation is left to the user pressing the button. Which means that all you can know is that someone pressed a button. And therefore, again, it is only usable information is to know if you have an audience or not. And when it comes to low value you content, you want to hide from the user that they have an audience. Don't feed the trolls, as the saying goes.
Furthermore, I am not sure your logic holds. I have received a number of informative/downvote responses for my comment and it is currently found near the top of the page where most will see it and as a result has also garnered the most reply activity any of my comments have seen to date. If users are trying to make it less visible, they have failed miserably. The feedback that has been provided indicates that this is one of my most visible comments ever.
Again, the buttons have no real meaning. They are there simply to provide knowledge of someone having consumed your content. However, to try and find meaning, it seems most have settled on upvote = funny, downvote = informative. What is certain is that you do not want to feed the trolls. Providing analytics data to those creating garbage is how you end up with "post-facticism and ignorance on the internet" so the idea of using the downarrow to ward off negative content is completely nonsensical.
HN sorts downvoted comments lower in the page, colors them gray, and hides them from users by default. The only reason your comment is near the top of the page is because it's attached to the most upvoted top-level comment. It can't go any lower without breaking the comment thread.
Downvotes also take away karma and HN shadowbans people with negative karma.
None of this is just "analytics data" or how you'd want to treat someone writing informative comments. Your assertion the buttons are meaningless is directly at odds with how the site works.
At the time of posting this my comment sits with -2 points and, if read in order from top to bottom, is the 12th comment you will read. There are 112 total comments.
Which must mean that 100 comments much be even lower than -2, based on what you are telling us. If we assume people are downvoting poor content, that is not a good look for HN if at least 101 comments – almost all of them – were considered to be of low value.
The thing is, my read on most of those comments is that they are quite good and often informative. The outcome does not match your expectations.
> None of this is just "analytics data"
What else is gleaned from it? All I can know is that several people pressed a button. All that can tell me is that at least a handful of people saw my content. It is a weak analytics system, to be sure, but understandably you want to limit how much information is given, including for reasons of privacy. And, most importantly, you don't want to reveal any information to the trolls.
Heck if the the buttons are meaningless, why can't you downvote direct replies? People replying to your comment can't provide informative comments?
> What else is gleaned from it?
Primarily user-based moderation. Downvoted comments are dropped lower in the page, and removed if downvoted enough. Users who are sufficiently downvoted are shadowbanned, all without moderator intervention.
To incentivize replying instead. From the site's perspective, the reply is the preferred way to indicate to another that you saw their comment. Content is its bread and butter at the end of the day. A site that is nothing more than a bunch of arrows that people press would never gain any users.
However, it is well understood that only a small fraction of users are content creators. Most users will not take the time to formulate a reply. Thus the vote buttons are offered as a lower friction option to try and get them engaged in at least some capacity in order to give the analytics feedback to those who are creating the content.
Once you have provided a comment, though, you have demonstrated to the site that you are a content creator and are statistically likely to produce more content again in the future.
> People replying to your comment can't provide informative comments?
They will know that you read their comment when you reply to it. The buttons themselves do not carry meaning, they only let you know that someone saw your comment. It is not that you must press the button when it is informative, that's just the convention that seems to have been settled on as what other use would the button be for?
You certainly are not going to press it if you encounter a troll as that feeds them. The first rule of using the internet is do not feed the trolls. Why would you ever violate the internet's first rule? You wouldn't, of course.
> Downvoted comments are dropped lower in the page
Demonstrably not.
Granted, we are talking about comments, not stories, but presumably the same logic holds? What do you find intellectually interesting about low value content? Doesn't the premise of downvoting "bad" content violate the notion of it being intellectually interesting, thus violating the intent of the voting system?
But let's assume that comments are meant to be treated differently. All we really have to go on with respect to comments is from pg[1]. He indicates that the buttons have no meaning; use it however you please. He only considers it abuse if you press the button without reading the comment first, which, again, goes back to it being an analytics system.
In fact, there already exists a flag button for dealing with "bad" content which doesn't reveal analytics data to the user.
pg was an early pioneer in developing methods to stop spammers[2], so no doubt he, more than most, understands the importance of not leaking participation data to spammers. If they know you're reading, they're going to keep on doing it. Only when they think their audience has disappeared will they stop. And, so, downvoting their content is ultimately nonsensical, even if nobody is going to ban you if you do. Given that the buttons have no meaning, there is no policing. It is fundamentally impossible to determine your voting intent by observing your action of pressing an unlabelled button. But there is an assumption that you will use the buttons in good faith around content you find interesting, not to feed the trolls.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
[2] http://paulgraham.com/spam.html
I'd request that you don't downvote my comments should you ever find one informative.
I love getting replies in emails. If you don't follow up on conversations, no one learns.
[0]: https://hnnotify.xyz/
I think this promotes a different style of content than you could get on other platforms. For example, I'm more careful about packing all my ideas into a single concise take if I'm not planning on having a long drawn out thread where I continuously clarify my position.
If I'm really curious about replies to my comment, I'll check back. Otherwise I comment and move on with my life
Unless the topic is around cryptocurrencies, that is. Then the conversation is curiously unintelligent.
[0]: http://hnreplies.com
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26968908
I wish this was a setting on HN. For uBlock origin users, this is what I'm trying right now:
Seems to work fine.https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=karaterobot
https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fe...
That's an option? Or do you use some sort of user style/extension for to do that?
I wish to encourage conversations I am interested in (or I otherwise enjoy / appreciate). Bothering to write a reply in good faith is nice.
Also, internet points are a worthless, sham, game-ification trick thing.
Using upvotes to indicate "I've replied to you" is also going to be drowned out by noise because a poster has no way to know who has upvoted therefore no way of distinguishing your "I've replied to you" upvote from a regular user who upvoted their reply because it was informative/useful.
While I fully agree, it works well enough as is :)
One view could be that the purpose of upvoting is to lift informative posts to the top and make them quicker to find. In that case, I don't see that downvotes really add much. Poor posts just sink to the bottom from lack of upvotes.
Another view could be that the purpose of voting is to show dis/agreement. My own feeling is that expressing a position without offering a supporting argument is a bad practice. Others no doubt feel differently about that.
Tangentially related: if there is one thing that I wish the mods re-evaluated in the guidelines is the idea that "downvotes are okay to signal disagreement". I am not going to say something silly like "HN is turning into reddit", but I will say that the discussions have been more politicized, people are forgetting to "keep their identity small" [0], and it feels like people are ever more trigger-happy to downvote anything they see as opposing their worldviews.
[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
My point is not to have strict control, merely to get the mods to acknowledge the change in behavior from the community and review their recommendations.
What I don't get is when I see a totally grayed out comment with a valid argument but no response whatsoever. These seem like they were just the victim of a mob attack that wanted to shut the conversation out.
Good comments that are grey, but not dead, I tend to upvote, because they're getting jumped on for no good reason.
Although it made me feel somewhat guilty to the people who answered my question, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598801
But I sometimes upvote comments I do not need saved, just in hope to draw the authors attention, if I reply days after his comment and want him to reply back. I hope he will notice the karma change and will look around.
And rarely I upvote opinions I strongly agree with and want to endorse.
Though I do use the feature.
Algolia search is sufficiently good that my own comments on threads are also a useful referencing method, and (though nominally also public), serve my own research / reference needs fairly well.
But I am much more likely to upvote a non-substantive (but positive) reply to my own comment, such as "Thanks". I wouldn't do this if it was a reply to anyone else's comment. That is a quick way of acknowledging the response, as you mentioned.
edit: I would be less likely to downvote direct replies, out of respect for the person engaging, but that option isn't available anyway
I suspect most don’t upvote replies and I respect that is their choice.
Quite simply, if I were replying in a moron fashion, I'd prefer you left me without the upvote as well, so I'll do the same to you.
The comments that are grey because they said something controversial are the ones I upvote the most.
I mean if we keep downvoting all the comments we disagree with because of an emotional response to it, how will we ever have an interesting discussion?
Also, I've noticed a pattern that after the depth of let's say 1-2 back and forth, the civility is often lost and the thread is no longer engaging.
One should know when it is a good time to stop replying..
For direct replies to my comments, I upvote anything that is remotely helpful.
If HN wanted us to have what you are suggesting, like letting them know, HN would have had notifications for comment replies. They don't.
If someone spends some amount of time to write a reply or their comment is truly helpful, I let them know I read them by saying thanks in reply. I do also upvote them.
Over everything, one extra upvote count does not say that it was you who upvoted it. Does it?
Better to say thanks, directly if it helps you.
Having said that, it's true that I have a lower threshold to upvoting an insightful comment when it's a direct reply vs the general thread.
And similarly, a rude comment is left intentionally ignored; I'll admit I get a bit of satisfaction in the thought that they'll never know if they were talking by themselves or I simply didn't dignify them with a response :p
I always boosted people other than myself IRL too, so why not do it here? At least in the "cyber" realm there's a record of it.
Do you mean see upvotes to your own comments? Or see upvotes to comments in general, including those of others?
If the latter, how do you "see" them? Is this something hidden until I have more HN points (like the downvote "superpower," apparently)?
I have found that it is very rare that one of my grandchild+ comments attracts more upvotes than my original comment though, so I don't concern myself with these comments much.
If someone took the time to read and think about whatever it was, worth a point IMO. Probably 95% or more at a guess get upvotes (maybe a bit less because I don't notice them all or just forget).
I also rarely actually upvote stories. But I upvote all comments that I find interesting.
1. I find it valuable to the conversation and want to bring it more visibility (and maybe further replies).
2. I want to incentivize similar future comments. "Good boy".
Who they're replying to isn't really part of the equation.
I upvote comments I strongly agree with/like.
Yes, I do the same usually.
One of the biggest problems with HN is the detractors of crypto know nothing about it. They claim it’s a scam therefore that allows them (in their mind) to remain ignorant.