Poll: Ask HN: Do you upvote an article after or before reading it?

4 points by genieyclo ↗ HN
Ask HN: Do you upvote an article after or before reading it?

10 comments

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Even if people do upvote an article before reading it, I doubt they will admit it.
It's a two-valued poll, you only get a binary choice, if you upvote 90% of the time after reading an article and 10% before then 'after' would still be the best choice (and that's what it would be in my case, the upvotes I do 'before' are of ask HN articles that I think ask valid questions).
That's a good point. I was just noting that even if someone voted 90%-10% the other way he or she would probably not respond to this poll truthfully, given the tendency here to look down on those who don't think before they do. I'd be surprised if "vote before reading" gets more than zero votes.
I often up vote before reading since up vote is also flag for latter.
Yeah, I was mildly confused too by the fact that the articles you've upvoted are called "saved" articles in your profile.

Anyway after once having upvoted w/o reading an "advanced data structures" article which turned out to be extremely far from "advanced", I at least try to skim before upvoting.

I'll usually upvote after reading the article. There are a few instances I've upvoted before... the most recent example was the article that linked to a spreadsheet of all TED talks.
With the exception of 'ask HN'. Also I will upvote almost anything that I comment on, if it was interesting enough to comment on it deserves the vote, same with polls that I cast a vote in.

I'll never upvote techcrunch articles though.

What's wrong with upvoting techcrunch? You figure they don't need any more help?
No, it's just that it seems like HN is the rss feed for techcrunch. It doesn't matter how inane a techcrunch article is it will get 50+ votes anyway.

And since the twitter internal documents stunt they pulled I have little sympathy for them.

I religiously upvote "Critique My Startup" type posts. Anybody who has worked hard on a project deserves to be seen first, and before any article, op-ed or tutorial. There is a human being on the other end of the line actually waiting for my feedback.