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Ask HN: How and Why Do You Upvote/Downvote?

10 points by ChikkaChiChi ↗ HN
When you vote on a comment or article, what is your criteria for awarding or penalizing it?

Do you vote on a lot of comments in a thread, or do you only vote on certain ones? If the latter, what prompts you to choose those ones in particular?

Does the concept of upvoting/downvoting/abstaining satisfy your desire to participate without always commenting? If not, what, if anything, would you change?

8 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 28.7 ms ] thread
arielm
Interesting question!

* I upvote articles that discuss something(s) I believe _everyone_ should know.

* I upvote comments that either help clarify a topic, add context, or present an interesting thought that isn't mentioned.

* I downvote comments that are blatantly disrespectful, silly, or grossly incorrect/ignorant.

badgercapital
I upvote a lot. Most of the people on here are posting personal work they have put their lives into.
pavel_lishin
If there's a comment chain that looks like this:

  [1] Parent/comment about something technical
    [2] Incorrect assumption/factually wrong statement
      [3] Explanation/correction
I'll typically upvote comment #2 as well as #3, to expose visibility - if one person is mistaken about something, others are probably too, and it doesn't help anyone if comment #2 is downvoted out of visibility.
zxcvcxz
I'm non-participatory when it comes to voting most of the time. I'll usually upvote people who reply to my comments in agreeance with me.

I don't have the ability to downvote yet, but if I did I think I would mostly downvote blatant "fanboy" posts, of which I see a lot of on HN.

I'd be interested in seeing data that compared Windows/OSX/Linux users and their vote participation. Linux users strike me as the types that would be the most non-participatory, and OS X users the most participatory, with Windows users coming somewhere in the middle.

IvyMike
* I upvote articles I read and liked.

* I basically never flag anything because it's not clear what "flag" means. I mean, I can make a good guess, but who knows if I understand the nuance. Is there a guideline somewhere?

* I only downvote comments that are flat-out factually wrong, or I believe are posted in bad faith.

BorisMelnik
* upvote whenever I see a response or article that is really relevant or well thought out

*20 points away from downvoting, but I will probably only downvote when I see comments that are 2 words or really silly / unbecoming of the community.

on another note sociology related: isn't it funny how 1 person used asterisk style bullets (markdown) and several of us followed?

Someone1234
I keep seeing people make really interesting posts, and then someone will reply pointing out a minor error, technicality, typo, or just call part of the above post "wrong" while spouting off an irrelevant personal opinion. Those I downvote.

Unfortunately, on the internet in general, you see that all the time. Someone makes a long, interesting, and thoughtful post with a lot of ideas and content. Then someone else writes a one line criticism that picks apart 1/100th of the previous comment's content, and then everyone upvotes the correction and downvotes the original for being "wrong" on something.

Really people are just too lazy to read long posts and certainly too lazy to think about them. So a lot of people skip over them and read the first reply to see if they are worth reading. They then see the correction, upvote it as they feel as if that person "saved" them from wasting time reading the long post, and then move on (or worse downvote the original comment).

Essentially people will downvote a long comment without having ever read it and will upvote a correction without a clue how relevant it is. It literally happens all the time.