Ask HN: How do you vote on comments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you vote on comments?

8 pointsdelinka4 comments

When I arrived on HN, I immediately gained the impression of higher-quality discourse than other news-based forums. Over time, I grew to understand that this was because lower-quality commentary would get down-voted by the community, higher-quality commentary would get up-voted.

I 'feel' a trend where this may not be the case with a significant number of members. Amongst my HN-using peers (in meatspace and on IRC), we've seen what appears to be votes for agreement (or lack thereof) rather than for quality. Or maybe the site's secret sauce is a bit more ... acidic?

In any case, I'd like to start some discourse on how we vote: do you base it on whether you agree with the comment? On comment quality? Does the notoriety of the commenter influence your decision?

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Summary: I vote quality.

I upvote plenty of comments I don't agree with that are well-stated. Make a good case, and my agreement or disagreement doesn't matter. And if there's a comment that I agree with but the writer is being name-calling asshole, I click the down arrow.

Reputation matters not, though those with a better "reputation" probably earned it by generally avoiding trollish behavior.

In general I probably don't fit a lot of the group think that HN is frequently accused of. But if someone makes a well-reasoned case for (say) using Bitcoin to pay my mortgage, I may still think they're nuts while clicking the up button because it makes a positive contribution.

I vote for quality, clarity and objectivity, regardless of match to my opinion.

Unfortunately sometimes the first come - first claim creates biases as you might have something very good to say, but I starts with 1, far below the other numbers. Other biases - like the majority not agreeing with you, regardless of your argumentation, are effective as well.

Yet, such voting systems are generally effective.

Perhaps the perceived higher quality of comments is simply a result of one primary ideology being enforced by the voting system?

I would wager that people tend to feel that comments they agree with are of higher quality than ones they disagree with, and as readers of HN are self selected its entirely possible that the entire effect is just an artifact.

I vote for quality as well as agreement. If a comment makes sense and is explained well, but I don't agree with it, I'm still very eager to vote it up.

I also doesn't make sense to comment along the same lines of another commenter. If my opinion is already expressed in the comments, an upvote makes way more sense imo.

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