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Perhaps it is instructive to note what votes do. Voting something up incentives the person submitting / commenting to do so more often in the way they did when
by elefantastisch 8y ago
Perhaps it is instructive to note what votes do. Voting something up incentives the person submitting / commenting to do so more often in the way they did when they earned the upvote and it also makes the content visible to more users. Voting something down does the opposite. It disincentives contributing more in the same fashion and it makes the content visible to fewer users.
So...
upvote == more of this please / more people should see this
downvote == less of this please / no one needs to see this
(And incidentally, flag == this is vastly inappropriate and not even worthy of a vote)
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoI wonder if HN would release stats on how often people downvote AND flag. Anecdata - I do both while it seems you only do one or the other. What about others?
- howard941 8y agoI'd like to see the stats too. I rarely downvote and treat it as if it were subtracted from my karma when I do it but I'm a frequent upvoter because it makes the recipient feel good, feel appreciated, and therefore encouraged to post more of the stuff I liked.
- masonic 8y agoI only use comment flags to signal that this comment warrants the attention of mods regardless of whether I disagree with whatever opinion it includes.
- snazz 8y agoAnecdotally, I also use the upvote button when I'm about to comment on something but then see that someone else has said it better than I could have. Instead of two comments that state roughly the same thing, the one that was posted first rises farther to the top.