I'm not sure if you think it's legitimate or not, but one of the effects of upvoting a story on hacker news, is that the thread stays around on the front page,

I'm not sure if you think it's legitimate or not, but one of the effects of upvoting a story on hacker news, is that the thread stays around on the front page, and the discussion grows. Users can upvote stories either because the story itself or because of the HN discussion thread; and it's often the latter that we come to this site for, isn't it? Isn't that legtimate, to upvote something if you already like or think you'd like the to read the discussion about it? Irrelevant note: This story didn't earn my vote.