HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you upvote direct replies?

96 points by withinboredom ↗ HN
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?

129 comments

[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] thread
Buttons840
As tempting as it was to just upvote and not reply ;)

Yes, I do the same usually.

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duxup
Generally yes if I feel they are “participating in the conversation”.

I suspect most don’t upvote replies and I respect that is their choice.

isatty
I only upvote comments I really like (even if I may not fully agree with it), and vice versa.
karaterobot
To be honest, I usually don't read direct replies to my comments. I don't get notifications from HN that they exist, if such notifications are a feature HN has. I have my comment karma count hidden so that I don't pay attention to it, because I don't want to accidentally start caring about it. I definitely upvote direct replies to other people's comments, when I see good ones.
OJFord
> I have my comment karma count hidden so that I don't pay attention to it, because I don't want to accidentally start caring about it.

That's an option? Or do you use some sort of user style/extension for to do that?

normie3000
It’s unlikely he’ll see your reply!
zamadatix
To hide karma on the top bar via uBlock Origin:

  news.ycombinator.com###karma
zamadatix
And scores in general:

  news.ycombinator.com##.score
andrewmcwatters
I'm going to try this with my ad blocker. HN karma makes this place significantly less pleasant to frequent. I'd like to speak my mind without obsessing over whether or not my comment appeals to someone.

I wish this was a setting on HN. For uBlock origin users, this is what I'm trying right now:

    ! 2022-06-20 https://news.ycombinator.com
    ! Top karma
    news.ycombinator.com###karma
    ! Profile form karma
    news.ycombinator.com##.profileform > table > tbody > tr:nth-of-type(3)
    ! User karma
    news.ycombinator.com##td > table > tbody > tr:nth-of-type(3)
    ! Comment score
    news.ycombinator.com##.comhead > .score
Seems to work fine.
trinovantes
So weird that we have almost the same rules

    news.ycombinator.com###karma
    news.ycombinator.com##.score
    news.ycombinator.com##.profileform tr:nth-of-type(3)
    news.ycombinator.com###me
amingilani
Regarding notifications, try HN Notify[0]. It came up a long time ago and I've been using it ever since.

I love getting replies in emails. If you don't follow up on conversations, no one learns.

[0]: https://hnnotify.xyz/

HellsMaddy
There’s also hnreplies[0]. Keep in mind, they were hacked once and leaked email addresses[1].

[0]: http://hnreplies.com

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26968908

Markoff
But why would you use it when you can just click on Threads and see your comments and replies to them? Though it's sorted by your comments, not by replies to them.
HellsMaddy
Because then I have to remember to check and I might miss a reply for hours or days. I check my email much more frequently than I check my HN comments.
woojoo666
If everybody followed this mindset though, people start to expect that you'll read their replies. I don't want to be always burdened with that. Reddit and chat messengers already come with that sort of culture. I sort of enjoy the Hacker News style of not receiving notifications, it creates a culture where you can just share comments and perspectives without tying yourself down to a conversation.

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

amingilani
I agree that it is tiresome to continuously clarify your position in comments, but somehow that isn't how conversations go on HN. Although, your mileage will vary.

Unless the topic is around cryptocurrencies, that is. Then the conversation is curiously unintelligent.

danbruc
Especially if a discussion goes on for more than a day, I upvote comments after I replied to them, so that the user might notice the karma change and have a look at the comments and notice my reply.
Cerium
I upvote most replies, especially replies I don't agree with. I think that doing otherwise does not respect the little space in the conversion that I started.
jszymborski
I upvote direct replies that I think are helpful, or make me smile. I'm generally quite stingy with my up/downvotes but I feel like I'm most likely to vote on direct replies.
technothrasher
I'm generally quite stingy as well, but I'm the exact opposite and am more likely to vote on comment threads I'm not participating in. If I'm interested in a thread, I'll either upvote or comment, usually not both. I downvote very rarely, and usually for comments that are shallow or snarky one liners like you'll find upvoted all over reddit.
FatalLogic
No. I looked at some recent replies to my comments, and I've only upvoted about 50%.

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

thrdbndndn
I upvote as soon as they're in good faith (which, fortunately, almost always are on HN, compared to something like Reddit.)
jaytaylo
Me too, why not do it this way?

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.

csdvrx
Well, some of us prefer upvotes to indicate "I've replied to you" - I even put that in my profile!
imron
Most people will likely never read your profile unless they have a specific reason to, and replying to a post is not a specific reason for many (I basically never check profiles of people I've replied to).

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.

csdvrx
> 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 :)

wrp
I guess a problem with discussing voting is that there isn't really agreement on the purpose of it.

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.

kelseyfrog
I only upvote direct replies I disagree with.
m463
hmmm... this seems like a joke but I can't help but think "I may disagree with what you say, but I will support the right for you to say it"
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bediger4000
I almost always upvote replies to my comments, the exception being rote repetition of common wisdom (not knowledge!)
avodonosov
I do not, because I use the "upvoted comments" and "upvoted submissions" as a collection of useful links and TODO study. So if the reply is not something I may use in the future, I do not upvote to aviod bloating my link list.

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.

rglullis
Why not use the "favorite" list for that?
gnicholas
Not parent, but favorites are public, while upvotes are private.
avodonosov
Because it's public, while my list is not intended for that
dredmorbius
The fact that HN faves are public is ... something of a pain point for me.

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.

keyle
Yes, whether I agree or not, if I read it and it's not a troll comment, I upvote it for the time spent.
samstave
I do this as well.

I also rarely actually upvote stories. But I upvote all comments that I find interesting.

jimbob45
Universally yes. I figured I was cumulatively wasting hours of my life deliberating on whether or not people deserved upvotes. In reality, if someone put any effort into replying to my dumb self, they deserve to be upvoted by me at the very least.
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ducktective
I upvote comments to keep track of what I've read so far.
tpmx
This feels odd to me - it sort of feels like manipulating the graph for your selfish purposes. It also feels kinda cheap - as in devaluing the value of upvotes.

I upvote comments I strongly agree with/like.

rglullis
If the comment seems to be from someone engaging in a productive conversation, yes, I upvote even if disagreeing.

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

djbusby
I downvote for talking about downvote.
rglullis
And now I wish you could downvote yourself. :p
the_only_law
I've been saying for a while that if downvote=disagree downvote is the equivalent of replying "I disagree" or "you're wrong" and nothing else. Such a useless signal would be flagged down immediately as a comment.
rglullis
Exactly. I get that that there are plenty of comments or threads that are so "wrong" that you don't want to dignify them with a response, but usually my reaction to those is to press the [-] and hide it. For the other cases, I check if there is any response already that addresses the problematic points and try to not just pile on the downvotes.

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.

AnimalMuppet
Such comments may be from a user who is shadowbanned. If you think it's a good comment, vouch for it.
rglullis
Vouching implies that the comment is flagged, no? I am talking about comments that are grayed out, but not marked as flagged or dead.
AnimalMuppet
Ah. Shadowbanned are dead - greyed all the way out, and they say "[dead]". That's what I thought you meant when you said "totally greyed out".

Good comments that are grey, but not dead, I tend to upvote, because they're getting jumped on for no good reason.

the_only_law
Kinda ironic, this comment caught some drive by downvoting, to drag it back down to zero, but you'll notice no one has refuted me or told me why I'm wrong.
shadowofneptune
It instead says something else: "I do not think your comment should exist." That's in effect what it does, it makes it harder for people to read the comment's content. I feel making that explicit in the rules would be a good thing.
wnoise
It's far more performative as a comment, and duplicates dilute the ability to actually read interesting comments.
ALittleLight
You should only have rules that can be enforced. Having rules that people are free to break is an unnecessary corruption of the system - users and moderators know that the actual rules aren't what is written but what is enforced. People will downvote based on disagreement and there is no way to detect or punish that so why have a rule against it?
rglullis
Guidelines != rules.

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.

wrp
Forums that have upvote but not downvote seem to have less acrimonious interaction. I suspect that the quality of discussion here would be improved if downvoting were completely eliminated.
rglullis
I don't mind the downvotes per se. They are important to show conflict, and I wouldn't like to be coddled into a discussion forum based on silly rules like "only positive interactions allowed" . What bugs me is the mass downvoting without any proper response.
ramesh31
What makes HN so great is that you can always count on being upvoted for a direct refutation of someone, as long as it's in good faith and you make a meaningful point. I try to do that as much as possible with people who correct my thinking here.
ohCh6zos
As a rule I upvote anything I bothered to finish reading that isn't namecalling or spam because I hope it creates more discourse.
mysterydip
I upvote when the only thing I would reply to their reply is "thanks!" to save everyone else the scrolling.
hamiltonians
i think upvoting too much means they may not count or are filtered.
mihaic
I upvote maybe around 25-30% of replies, mostly depending on the perceived quality and effort of the message. That's the amount I think deserves an upvote, and more would feel like tipping in the US: automatic and too much.
woojoo666
At least for me, upvotes are for when I think a post/comment is useful. I don't have to agree with it, but if it provides some insight, or provokes good discussion, I upvote. I also don't use upvotes for other purposes, like telling repliers that I saw their reply, since I think that would make the meaning of an upvote more ambiguous.

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

AndyNemmity
I'm the same, I follow the rules of only upvoting insightful or interesting replies, and only downvoting rude, angry, and insulty comments.
Nuzzerino
Upvoting something makes it easier to find a comment again later as you can look through your own history of upvoted comments.
grzm
You can also use the "favorite" link for that purpose as well.
egfx
I use upvotes for bookmarks as well. The interesting thing is that these upvoted bookmarks are private unlike favorites.
frosted-flakes
I tend to upvote too many things for the upvoted list to work for me, so I'm glad the favourites function exists. If I find a comment useful or insightful, I automatically upvote it without thinking. Maybe I upvote too much; I don't know.
Nuzzerino
Favorites are publicly viewable, not everyone may want that.
grepfru_it
Sometimes English isn’t the poster’s first language and emotion can be interpreted differently. For this reason I never downvote
DiggyJohnson
Surely most of us are capable of distinguishing those negativities from the bluntness/imprecision of a non-native speaker, right?
Mo3
> Sometimes

> never

Choose one

Akronymus
Could be rewritten as "I never downvote, to avoid the possibility of sometimes misinterpreting the tone of a non native speaker."
grepfru_it
Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat
Akronymus
I am not sure I follow what you mean.
randomdata
> downvoting rude, angry, and insulty comments.

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.

giancarlostoro
I would instead suggest to 'flag' comments that are rude, angry and insulting.
saagarjha
Why would anyone want to downvote an informative comment?
ncmncm
We can speculate, but it is observed, albeit not universally.
randomdata
Why would you reward an informative comment with analytics data? To try and encourage more of the same. The opposite of why you would not reward poor content with a "read receipt". Like before, content that sees no data in return will eventually bore those creating it. In the case of someone posting informative content, you don't want the author to get bored.
Volundr
But surely downvotes will discourage informative comments? I'd most certainly be discouraged to find that comment I worked hard on to provide context in an area I'm an expert grey and dead.

Thank goodness this is not actually how most people use up/downvotes.

randomdata
Why would you be discouraged by knowing that, under a reasonable assumption, that someone read your comment? Isn't that kind of the whole point of contributing? To have people read your content?

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.

felurx
The point of up- and downvoting literally is to decide what should be more or less visible. By downvoting useful/informative content, you're making it less visible for others, and for most people, it's discouraging to see that someone just pressed the "I did not like that, I think it's bad, show it to less people" button.

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.

randomdata
If that were the case there would be no benefit in providing information to the content creator about the points their comment has received. Instead, we can determine this information is provided because the purpose of voting is to provide a "read receipt" to the creator, enabling one to know that someone has, with a reasonable degree of confidence, consumed his content. It is ultimately a poor man's analytics system.

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.

Volundr
> Again, the buttons have no real meaning.

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.

randomdata
> HN sorts downvoted comments lower in the page

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.

Volundr
Again, your comment is in reply to the top voted comment. It's not above those other comments because it scores higher, it's above those other comments because it literally cannot go any lower than it currently is without breaking the thread. It's sorted at the bottom of the reply chain. A couple more downvotes and people would have to turn on show dead to even see it. By default it'd be invisible. That's how we treat "informative comments"?

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.

randomdata
> Heck if the the buttons are meaningless, why can't you downvote direct replies?

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.

Volundr
At this point I'll just point you to the HN FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), since you seem to be unaware of some core functionality of this site and are clearly not actually reading my comments. If you'd actually like some ideas of how the HN software responds to up/downvotes I suggest you read it.
randomdata
I'm afraid there isn't much written about the buttons we're speaking about there, but this tidbit may be pertinent: "Users should vote for a story because they personally find it intellectually interesting"

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

dr_kiszonka
I'd say most people get discouraged by downvotes, except for trolls maybe, but I have no data to support it.

I'd request that you don't downvote my comments should you ever find one informative.

Volundr
I think someone read my comment and decided it had no place on hn. Downvoting makes the comment less visible, ranking it lower in the page, and eventually invisible to anyone who hasn't turned show dead on. Downvotes also take away karma, potentially losing privileges and eventually being banned if everyone did as you described.
andrewflnr
The thing is, downvoting directly makes a comment less visible. The point is more any managing SNR than the feelings of the poster, so downvoting is still the right thing even if you're worried about rewarding them with negative attention. But even then, they know a downvote means several more people won't see their comment at all. And most people genuinely still don't like downvotes, so they're an effective signal of what's accepted or not in the community. In short, the poster's feelings are pretty irrelevant when it comes to downvoting.