Ask HN: Why should we upvote or downvote a comment?
With submission I suppose you up vote them because you like them? I do not understand how can you not up vote a comment you agree with though, or down vote one you disagree with.
Say someone comments about the liberal arts education being a good thing and old people are just deluding themselves in thinking that their education was much better and that our education is obsolete.
This comment I would up vote because I agree with it. If someone said Education is a complete failure I would down vote it because I disagree with it.
Apparently this is infuriating to some? Does that mean that we should not up vote comments we agree with?
In short, why do you think a comment should be up voted or down voted?
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12 comments
| 7 points
| on HN
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Irrespective of if I agree with their message or not.
Examples. Take these to comments I made the other day:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=675136
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=675230
The first was rightfully downvoted because it all but amounted to a rant. In the second I made a much more reasoned point (but with basically the same conclusion as the first) and it got an upvote.
In my eyes that is the HN effect working :)
Although all of that said I have noticed a tendency for upvotes to snowball sometimes - and for some comments to obviously be voted on based on agreement/disagreement *(not that there is a specific rule against that of course!).
For example, on a "rate my web site" thread where somebody makes a suggestion, and I simply agree, I'll up-vote without adding to the thread.
With the added warning that your actions will have an effect on the voting and commenting behaviours of other hacker news readers in the long term, but this will mostly align well with the above affects.
Edit: I should add that most people upvote differently on Hacker News than they do on Reddit, because of the second effect whereby they might not necessarily think a comment is rude, but if it doesn't add anything to discussion they will downvote in the hope that the comments in the long run will be more helpful.
1) everyone upvotes to agree (and only to agree), and downvotes to disagree (and only to disagree). Then the score on a contribution measures its proximity to the average opinion.
2) everyone upvotes signal and downvotes noise. Then the score on a contribution measures its relevance to HN readers.
Since I don't care about average opinions but much about relevance, I upvote and downvote by rule 2).
For example I upvote what I like/agree with. I downvote stupid or wrong stuff.
That being said, I think the HN community has regulated itself remarkably well so that truth/content gets sufficient votes and falsehood/noise gets downvoted, and heavily so if needed.
Sometimes I vote up things I disagree with, because I am interested in the opinion of the HN community on the issue.
I downvote comments: that fairly strongly don't add anything to the conversation; that contain a high percentage of profanity without saying anything useful; that I disagree with and are not well-presented (e.g., trolls).
But not always. Most comments I don't do anything with. If I see a moderately insightful comment with 1 point, I'll probably upvote it. If I see a similarly moderately insightful comment with 4 points, I may think that's high enough and leave it alone. If I see a moderately trollish comment that's at -3, and I didn't think it was that bad, I might upvote it, not because I like it, but because I think -2 is sufficiently low.
On the whole, I try to vote such that the more I want to see similar comments, the higher the score; and the less I want to see similar comments, the lower the score.
I have a policy of only downmodding posts that are not a part of legitimate discussion. This includes obvious trolls, but also any post where I don't think the post contributes anything, such as an ad-hominem attack.
I do not downmod a post just because I disagree with it. If I disagree with the post, but it's not an obvious troll or incendiary in any way, I leave it alone. I see downmodding as a means to keep discussions civil, not to show disapproval with a point of view.
In contrast, I upmod posts I agree with. This means that a single control - voting up or down - has an asymmetric meaning for me.
I'm all about modding the people who post goatse links down into negative oblivion, but I think it kind of stifles discussion if you downmod simply because you don't happen to agree. Instead of dog-piling someone for a dissenting opinion, take the extra 30 seconds to write a response. It'll enrich the discussion.
Discussed before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147098
I generally upvote anything I respond to, even in disagreement, unless it's obnoxious (in which case, I downvote).