HN Explorer

Ask HN: How many of you upvote before reading?

21 points by jkaljundi ↗ HN
Just curious, do many of you upvote HN links before actually opening and reading them? If yes, is it based on the author, domain or just the headline? Do you sometimes feel sorry you upvoted after readingthe link?

16 comments

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geuis
Almost never. I don't care who the HN member is, so that doesn't play into it. The only time I'll upvote something without clicking on it is if I read the article from another source previously. Usually the headline matches or is close to the original piece, a quick glance at the domain, and a hover over the headline to verify the url will do it. At most, I think I do this maybe 3x a week at most.
Osiris
Is anyone going to admit to this?

I have done it before, rarely, but only on new submissions if the article sounds interesting enough to deserve some traction.

teej
I'll openly admit to it. The comments on Hacker News are more valuable than the link itself. I will upvote a link with a good discussion often without ever reading the article.
yread
I sometimes upvote an article before I finished reading it and then I want to take it back when I realize it wasn't up to HN standard.
stuhacking
You mean when it wasn't up to your standard?

The total number of upvotes on an article determines what the wider HN community thinks of it.

sliverstorm
I sometimes upvote comments halfway through reading, but I don't do that with articles.

(I confess I upvote only a very few articles)

dclaysmith
I try and give any genuine "Show HN"/Need Feedback links an upvote. I also always check them out but I'm sure I've upvoted first only to find out it was "Show HN Spam" if there is such a thing.
Locke1689
An upvote/upmod is also called a "save." If you look in your profile, you can see all of the submissions you have upmodded under "saved stories." There have been a couple times where I glance at a story, know it's interesting and something I want to read later, and upmod it to save it for later.
code
Instapaper is your best friend. It'll avoid upvoting links unnecessarily and allow you to read stuff later perfectly fine.
lloeki
Once you read the story in Instapaper it can be a pain to find it again on HN and upvote it though.
code
I save the HN post itself, not the endlink. It's better in case you want to comment rather than go straight to the article. And since you saved the HN link, you can always easily navigate to the article later. I don't read in instapaper itself, I go direct to link. Instapaper is just a really efficient bookmarking tool for me.
randall
I vote using the YC bookmarklet more often than not.
Locke1689
It's not an unnecessary upvote—I thought I made it clear that this behavior was part of the site's design. I rarely upvote stories at all, so stories which were compelling enough in the first couple of paragraphs to cause me to want to read them later are worthy of an upvote, in my eyes.

I think a much more disturbing trend is rush-upvoting everything that comes out of e.g. TechCrunch.

BasDirks
Yes, I upvote links that I would like to see the community talk about, even if I haven't yet read the article, and in rare cases if I don't even plan on reading it. Of course this differs case-by-case, but I use my vote to stimulate conversation.

Like teej said, often the comments are more valuable than the link.

ahmedaly
It's a rare condition when I upvote before reading.. but I do it from a time to another.. if I find something exciting.
jokermatt999
Never, but I only upvote 2 or 3 stories a day. Comments, I'll admit I occasionally upvote them before finishing them if they make a very good point in the first half. Occasionally I've wanted to take it back because they made a completely unnecessary snarky remark at the end of it, but not often.

However, that does lead me to point out that I think the upvote/downvote arrows and the user's name should be at the bottom of a comment instead of the top.