Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

An upvote doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with the comment. They are supposed to mean that the comment is worthwhile or adds something to the discussion. IMO, the ggp comment doesn't.

View on HN

They mean whatever the upvoter wants them to mean: agreement, approval, or a meant-to-click-downvote instead. In practical use, people often do upvote because they agree.

So I'm a newbie here, my account is less than a year old, god knows I've trolled and flamed my share, etc. But when I first joined, I saw the guideline/notion that upvotes should indicate contribution to discussion rather than agreement and was impressed. I'd be sad if this position was abandoned. Upvoting for contribution to discussion promotes good discussion. Upvoting for agreement promotes hivemind, of whichever variety.

In 2009, I wrote a little parody of the Zen of Python that includes a bit about what I felt upvotes were/should be used for: http://marcuscavanaugh.com/zen-of-hn/ -- I think that regardless of what guidelines were created initially, people do upvote as agreement, whether we like it or not.

I like upvotes as an expression of agreement because it gives an indication of the truthiness of the comment (wisdom of the crowd). If someone says something in a field I'm not familiar with, and I don't know if they're right or not, I know that the following will occur:

- If they're right, people will upvote.

- If they're wrong, people will either downvote or reply stating why they're wrong.

And since I don't think any of us want comments like "I Agree", upvotes are our only option for providing a vote of confidence in a comment.

The only situation where I'll upvote or downvote based on "agreement" or "disagreement" is statements of fact--and even then, inane statements of fact that don't contribute to the discussion, I don't upvote.

But you're only going to up vote things that you agree with that also add to the conversation. Of course people up vote things they agree with, but in the case of something like the comment that started this all off, did it really add much to the conversation? I didn't think so, but it wasn't frivolous enough for me to down vote it. You're free to disagree and up vote all you want.

As a side note: truthiness, as defined by Colbert [1] isn't something that a crowd can tell you. It's something that only your gut can tell you. And my gut says that your comment wants a burrito.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

At least in this case, people can upvote his comment rather than posting the same comment themselves. It's a way of contributing, "I feel the same way," without cluttering up the threads with a million "me too" posts.

> They are supposed to mean...

Url?

This is a fairly longstanding consensus here. It comes up every now and again though, and my position isn't the only one. Some believe up votes can mean agreement, but that obviously this has a limit. Since a down vote definitely doesn't mean disagreement, it only follows that the opposite shouldn't mean agreement. That would only serve to dilute the conversation. Like I said though, this is just a rough consensus.

Here is a previous HN discussion on comments [1].

And I'll save you the trouble of reading through to an even earlier discussion[2] where PG weighed in to say "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement." But this was on a different topic regarding troll-like behavior, so it's not entirely clear what his thoughts are.

But a person is going to use their up votes to mean whatever they want them to mean. If you want to up vote in agreement, go ahead, no one is going to stop you. I only up vote things I agree with if I think it adds to the conversation. So while I thought the linked video was impressive and a great way to see the product, I'm not going to up vote a comment that doesn't add much. You are free to disagree.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=214398

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Reply on news.ycombinator.com