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I find comment voting tremendously useful: - It gives me direct feedback on whether other users found my comments insightful. I find it encouraging when I put

I find comment voting tremendously useful: - It gives me direct feedback on whether other users found my comments insightful. I find it encouraging when I put some effort into explaining something and I get a bunch of points for it. I'd much rather get upvotes than a bunch of meaningless replies like "I agree", "good post", or "x2". (Getting substantive replies is even better, but not always warranted.) - It gives me an easy way to find comments others have found insightful, even if they're nested deep in a thread where they don't get auto-sorted to the top. I was actually planning to ask for highlighting on highly-rated comments -- something unobtrusive like bolding the number. - It gives me a way to reward/encourage those whose comments I found educational or insightful. Downvoting can also provide an injection of dumbness or ill will into a conversation. But I would take the dumbness of downvotes over the dumbness of people saying "you're an idiot" any day.

ericd 17y ago
And with voting, I don't have to say "I second this" to everything I strongly agree with or that I find very insightful. But in case PG doesn't look at scores, I second this.
- KirinDave 17y ago
  You don't have to say "I second this," even without voting. If someone says something you like and agree with: congratulations, you have found a kindred soul, enjoy this moment of warmth in an otherwise dark and unforgiving universe. If someone says something you dislike or disagree with: if it's not worth posting a rationally and carefully written rebuttal to the post in question then it's probably not worth your time or effort, the internet is full of people who are wrong. In general that tiny number next to posts is more an indication of things other than the quality of the ideas expressed in posts. In fact, I'd say they're not well coupled. Usually, it's more correlated with political alignments or writing quality.
  - ericd 17y ago
    Well, the idea of HN's scoring is to bring the most insightful comments to the top while burying the noise, correct? I think it generally does a decent job of this, though the scoring seems to be somewhat noisier than it used to be.
  - ericd 17y ago
    Well, the idea of HN's scoring is to bring the most insightful comments to the top while burying the noise, correct? I think it generally does a decent job of this, though the scoring seems to be somewhat noisier than it used to be.

ericd 17y ago

And with voting, I don't have to say "I second this" to everything I strongly agree with or that I find very insightful. But in case PG doesn't look at scores, I second this.

KirinDave 17y ago
You don't have to say "I second this," even without voting. If someone says something you like and agree with: congratulations, you have found a kindred soul, enjoy this moment of warmth in an otherwise dark and unforgiving universe. If someone says something you dislike or disagree with: if it's not worth posting a rationally and carefully written rebuttal to the post in question then it's probably not worth your time or effort, the internet is full of people who are wrong. In general that tiny number next to posts is more an indication of things other than the quality of the ideas expressed in posts. In fact, I'd say they're not well coupled. Usually, it's more correlated with political alignments or writing quality.
- ericd 17y ago
  Well, the idea of HN's scoring is to bring the most insightful comments to the top while burying the noise, correct? I think it generally does a decent job of this, though the scoring seems to be somewhat noisier than it used to be.
- ericd 17y ago
  Well, the idea of HN's scoring is to bring the most insightful comments to the top while burying the noise, correct? I think it generally does a decent job of this, though the scoring seems to be somewhat noisier than it used to be.