9 ms·
Ask HN: Do you upvote direct replies?
When someone replies to my comment on HN, I usually upvote it, even if I disagree with it. It's the only signal I can give that: "yes, I read it but I don't care enough to reply right this second." I feel like this gives the author some feedback that their comment was appreciated, even if nobody ever replies.
I don't usually see upvotes deep in comment threads, but sometimes I do. Am I the only one doing this, or do other people do this too?
- Buttons840 4y agoAs tempting as it was to just upvote and not reply ;) Yes, I do the same usually.
- isatty 4y agoI only upvote comments I really like (even if I may not fully agree with it), and vice versa.
- karaterobot 4y agoTo be honest, I usually don't read direct replies to my comments. I don't get notifications from HN that they exist, if such notifications are a feature HN has. I have my comment karma count hidden so that I don't pay attention to it, because I don't want to accidentally start caring about it. I definitely upvote direct replies to other people's comments, when I see good ones.
- abathur 4y agoSuspiciously healthy :)
- amingilani 4y agoRegarding notifications, try HN Notify[0]. It came up a long time ago and I've been using it ever since. I love getting replies in emails. If you don't follow up on conversations, no one learns. [0]: https://hnnotify.xyz/ https://hnnotify.xyz/
- HellsMaddy 4y agoThere’s also hnreplies[0]. Keep in mind, they were hacked once and leaked email addresses[1]. [0]: http://hnreplies.com http://hnreplies.com [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26968908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26968908
- Markoff 4y agoBut why would you use it when you can just click on Threads and see your comments and replies to them? Though it's sorted by your comments, not by replies to them.
- HellsMaddy 4y agoBecause then I have to remember to check and I might miss a reply for hours or days. I check my email much more frequently than I check my HN comments.
- woojoo666 4y agoIf everybody followed this mindset though, people start to expect that you'll read their replies. I don't want to be always burdened with that. Reddit and chat messengers already come with that sort of culture. I sort of enjoy the Hacker News style of not receiving notifications, it creates a culture where you can just share comments and perspectives without tying yourself down to a conversation. I think this promotes a different style of content than you could get on other platforms. For example, I'm more careful about packing all my ideas into a single concise take if I'm not planning on having a long drawn out thread where I continuously clarify my position. If I'm really curious about replies to my comment, I'll check back. Otherwise I comment and move on with my life
- amingilani 4y agoI agree that it is tiresome to continuously clarify your position in comments, but somehow that isn't how conversations go on HN. Although, your mileage will vary. Unless the topic is around cryptocurrencies, that is. Then the conversation is curiously unintelligent.
- OJFord 4y ago> I have my comment karma count hidden so that I don't pay attention to it, because I don't want to accidentally start caring about it. That's an option? Or do you use some sort of user style/extension for to do that?
- normie3000 4y agoIt’s unlikely he’ll see your reply!
- zamadatix 4y agoTo hide karma on the top bar via uBlock Origin: news.ycombinator.com###karma
- zamadatix 4y agoAnd scores in general: news.ycombinator.com##.score
- andrewmcwatters 4y agoI'm going to try this with my ad blocker. HN karma makes this place significantly less pleasant to frequent. I'd like to speak my mind without obsessing over whether or not my comment appeals to someone. I wish this was a setting on HN. For uBlock origin users, this is what I'm trying right now: ! 2022-06-20 https://news.ycombinator.com ! Top karma news.ycombinator.com###karma ! Profile form karma news.ycombinator.com##.profileform > table > tbody > tr:nth-of-type(3) ! User karma news.ycombinator.com##td > table > tbody > tr:nth-of-type(3) ! Comment score news.ycombinator.com##.comhead > .score Seems to work fine.
- trinovantes 4y agoSo weird that we have almost the same rules news.ycombinator.com###karma news.ycombinator.com##.score news.ycombinator.com##.profileform tr:nth-of-type(3) news.ycombinator.com###me
- danbruc 4y agoEspecially if a discussion goes on for more than a day, I upvote comments after I replied to them, so that the user might notice the karma change and have a look at the comments and notice my reply.
- banana_giraffe 4y agoIn addition to other suggestions, if you want notifications of replies, one option is a little Reply-to-RSS thing you could self host, if that's useful: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fedf6829 https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fe...
- Markoff 4y agoYou can see them easily here in Threads https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=karaterobot https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=karaterobot
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- duxup 4y agoGenerally yes if I feel they are “participating in the conversation”. I suspect most don’t upvote replies and I respect that is their choice.
- Cerium 4y agoI upvote most replies, especially replies I don't agree with. I think that doing otherwise does not respect the little space in the conversion that I started.
- jszymborski 4y agoI upvote direct replies that I think are helpful, or make me smile. I'm generally quite stingy with my up/downvotes but I feel like I'm most likely to vote on direct replies.
- technothrasher 4y agoI'm generally quite stingy as well, but I'm the exact opposite and am more likely to vote on comment threads I'm not participating in. If I'm interested in a thread, I'll either upvote or comment, usually not both. I downvote very rarely, and usually for comments that are shallow or snarky one liners like you'll find upvoted all over reddit.
- FatalLogic 4y agoNo. I looked at some recent replies to my comments, and I've only upvoted about 50%. But I am much more likely to upvote a non-substantive (but positive) reply to my own comment, such as "Thanks". I wouldn't do this if it was a reply to anyone else's comment. That is a quick way of acknowledging the response, as you mentioned. edit: I would be less likely to downvote direct replies, out of respect for the person engaging, but that option isn't available anyway
- thrdbndndn 4y agoI upvote as soon as they're in good faith (which, fortunately, almost always are on HN, compared to something like Reddit.)
- jaytaylo 4y agoMe too, why not do it this way? I wish to encourage conversations I am interested in (or I otherwise enjoy / appreciate). Bothering to write a reply in good faith is nice. Also, internet points are a worthless, sham, game-ification trick thing.
- csdvrx 4y agoWell, some of us prefer upvotes to indicate "I've replied to you" - I even put that in my profile!
- imron 4y agoMost people will likely never read your profile unless they have a specific reason to, and replying to a post is not a specific reason for many (I basically never check profiles of people I've replied to). Using upvotes to indicate "I've replied to you" is also going to be drowned out by noise because a poster has no way to know who has upvoted therefore no way of distinguishing your "I've replied to you" upvote from a regular user who upvoted their reply because it was informative/useful.
- csdvrx 4y ago> Using upvotes to indicate "I've replied to you" is also going to be drowned out by noise because a poster has no way to know who has upvoted therefore no way of distinguishing your "I've replied to you" upvote from a regular user who upvoted their reply because it was informative/useful. While I fully agree, it works well enough as is :)
- wrp 4y agoI guess a problem with discussing voting is that there isn't really agreement on the purpose of it. One view could be that the purpose of upvoting is to lift informative posts to the top and make them quicker to find. In that case, I don't see that downvotes really add much. Poor posts just sink to the bottom from lack of upvotes. Another view could be that the purpose of voting is to show dis/agreement. My own feeling is that expressing a position without offering a supporting argument is a bad practice. Others no doubt feel differently about that.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI only upvote direct replies I disagree with.
- m463 4y agohmmm... this seems like a joke but I can't help but think "I may disagree with what you say, but I will support the right for you to say it"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bediger4000 4y agoI almost always upvote replies to my comments, the exception being rote repetition of common wisdom (not knowledge!)
- samstave 4y agoI do this as well. I also rarely actually upvote stories. But I upvote all comments that I find interesting.
- jimbob45 4y agoUniversally yes. I figured I was cumulatively wasting hours of my life deliberating on whether or not people deserved upvotes. In reality, if someone put any effort into replying to my dumb self, they deserve to be upvoted by me at the very least.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ducktective 4y agoI upvote comments to keep track of what I've read so far.
- avodonosov 4y agoI do not, because I use the "upvoted comments" and "upvoted submissions" as a collection of useful links and TODO study. So if the reply is not something I may use in the future, I do not upvote to aviod bloating my link list. Although it made me feel somewhat guilty to the people who answered my question, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598801 But I sometimes upvote comments I do not need saved, just in hope to draw the authors attention, if I reply days after his comment and want him to reply back. I hope he will notice the karma change and will look around. And rarely I upvote opinions I strongly agree with and want to endorse.
- rglullis 4y agoWhy not use the "favorite" list for that?
- gnicholas 4y agoNot parent, but favorites are public, while upvotes are private.
- avodonosov 4y agoexactly
- avodonosov 4y agoBecause it's public, while my list is not intended for that
- dredmorbius 4y agoThe fact that HN faves are public is ... something of a pain point for me. Though I do use the feature. Algolia search is sufficiently good that my own comments on threads are also a useful referencing method, and (though nominally also public), serve my own research / reference needs fairly well.
- keyle 4y agoYes, whether I agree or not, if I read it and it's not a troll comment, I upvote it for the time spent.
- tpmx 4y agoThis feels odd to me - it sort of feels like manipulating the graph for your selfish purposes. It also feels kinda cheap - as in devaluing the value of upvotes. I upvote comments I strongly agree with/like.
- rglullis 4y agoIf the comment seems to be from someone engaging in a productive conversation, yes, I upvote even if disagreeing. Tangentially related: if there is one thing that I wish the mods re-evaluated in the guidelines is the idea that "downvotes are okay to signal disagreement". I am not going to say something silly like "HN is turning into reddit", but I will say that the discussions have been more politicized, people are forgetting to "keep their identity small" [0], and it feels like people are ever more trigger-happy to downvote anything they see as opposing their worldviews. [0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- djbusby 4y agoI downvote for talking about downvote.
- rglullis 4y agoAnd now I wish you could downvote yourself. :p
- the_only_law 4y agoI've been saying for a while that if downvote=disagree downvote is the equivalent of replying "I disagree" or "you're wrong" and nothing else. Such a useless signal would be flagged down immediately as a comment.
- rglullis 4y agoExactly. I get that that there are plenty of comments or threads that are so "wrong" that you don't want to dignify them with a response, but usually my reaction to those is to press the [-] and hide it. For the other cases, I check if there is any response already that addresses the problematic points and try to not just pile on the downvotes. What I don't get is when I see a totally grayed out comment with a valid argument but no response whatsoever. These seem like they were just the victim of a mob attack that wanted to shut the conversation out.
- ramesh31 4y agoWhat makes HN so great is that you can always count on being upvoted for a direct refutation of someone, as long as it's in good faith and you make a meaningful point. I try to do that as much as possible with people who correct my thinking here.
- ohCh6zos 4y agoAs a rule I upvote anything I bothered to finish reading that isn't namecalling or spam because I hope it creates more discourse.
- mysterydip 4y agoI upvote when the only thing I would reply to their reply is "thanks!" to save everyone else the scrolling.
- hamiltonians 4y agoi think upvoting too much means they may not count or are filtered.
- mihaic 4y agoI upvote maybe around 25-30% of replies, mostly depending on the perceived quality and effort of the message. That's the amount I think deserves an upvote, and more would feel like tipping in the US: automatic and too much.
- woojoo666 4y agoAt least for me, upvotes are for when I think a post/comment is useful. I don't have to agree with it, but if it provides some insight, or provokes good discussion, I upvote. I also don't use upvotes for other purposes, like telling repliers that I saw their reply, since I think that would make the meaning of an upvote more ambiguous. Also I feel like Hackernews doesn't really push for prompt replies anyways. I don't comment expecting replies, so I likewise don't need confirmation on whether somebody read my comment or not
- AndyNemmity 4y agoI'm the same, I follow the rules of only upvoting insightful or interesting replies, and only downvoting rude, angry, and insulty comments.
- celdon25 4y agoUpvoting something makes it easier to find a comment again later as you can look through your own history of upvoted comments.
- grzm 4y agoYou can also use the "favorite" link for that purpose as well.
- egfx 4y agoI use upvotes for bookmarks as well. The interesting thing is that these upvoted bookmarks are private unlike favorites.
- frosted-flakes 4y agoI tend to upvote too many things for the upvoted list to work for me, so I'm glad the favourites function exists. If I find a comment useful or insightful, I automatically upvote it without thinking. Maybe I upvote too much; I don't know.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI usually do. I seldom downvote.
- kazinator 4y agoDownvoting direct replies is prohibited, for some good reasons. I respect those reasons and therefore refrain from upvoting also, which is a flipside of the same thing; it almost seems like a bug that it is allowed.
- klyrs 4y agoI have a suspicion that upvoting direct replies increases the overall standing of my post (ranking seems to aggregate positivity), so I do it with extreme prejudice -- I try to only upvote good-faith comments that disagree with or correct me.
- renewiltord 4y agoI upvote replies which are high quality or with whom I'd like to have a conversation. But there are lots of people who I wouldn't want to talk to here: lots of well ackchuallys, poor Bayesian reasoners, etc. Quite simply, if I were replying in a moron fashion, I'd prefer you left me without the upvote as well, so I'll do the same to you.
- rpmisms 4y agoYes, unless they're being a dick for no other reason than to be a dick. A reasonable reply is always upvoted, since I value all discussion.
- c23gooey 4y agoWould you, for example, upvote every comment in this post? Even if it reached 1000 comments. Surely not all the replies would be adding to the conversation, however if all of them are upvoted then it would dilute the value of an upvote
- dubswithus 4y agoOften replies are trying to mess with me by taking me down a peg. So no. One of the biggest problems with HN is the detractors of crypto know nothing about it. They claim it’s a scam therefore that allows them (in their mind) to remain ignorant.
- 3np 4y agoI upvote comments mainly for two reasons: 1. I find it valuable to the conversation and want to bring it more visibility (and maybe further replies). 2. I want to incentivize similar future comments. "Good boy". Who they're replying to isn't really part of the equation.
- lmm 4y agoI usually upvote replies, unless a reply is so unhelpful or hostile that I'd rather not have received it.
- blooalien 4y agoIf a reply or comment adds to the conversation (ie; is not just spam or trollery) then I tend to upvote it whether I agree with it or not.
- dontbenebby 4y agoIf it seems in good faith yeah, I used to rarely vote. I noticed shortly after I changed that I got kicked of Reddit, so I guess my opinion matters... people don't silence you if they're not scared. I always boosted people other than myself IRL too, so why not do it here? At least in the "cyber" realm there's a record of it.
- kadoban 4y agoI upvote any reply that's not just the absolute worst. If someone took the time to read and think about whatever it was, worth a point IMO. Probably 95% or more at a guess get upvotes (maybe a bit less because I don't notice them all or just forget).
- iancmceachern 4y agoYes, I do this
- Bjartr 4y agoAbsolutely. I make a point to, including, like you, to replies I disagree with if they've progressed the discussion.
- sebastien_b 4y agoOne thing I noted before that would potentially be a good change: downvotes should either cost points, or else require a reply why you did the downvote.
- andrewflnr 4y agoOn the contrary, the most important use of downvotes is for when any response would only make things worse.
- hollerith 4y agoI upvote most replies to me, but not the least thoughtful ones.
- nephanth 4y agoMy upvoting algorithm is the following - If I want to comment something, but realize it has already been said in another comment, I'll upvote that comment instead - If a comment is interesting & well researched/argumented I'll upvote it.
- n8henrie 4y ago> I don't usually see upvotes deep in comment threads Do you mean see upvotes to your own comments? Or see upvotes to comments in general, including those of others? If the latter, how do you "see" them? Is this something hidden until I have more HN points (like the downvote "superpower," apparently)?
- gnicholas 4y agoIt's only possible to see the vote count on your own comments, so OP must have been referring to OP's own comments. One way to check your comments' vote count is to go to your /threads page, but if you have a comment that is threaded underneath one of your own comments, it will be harder to see because it will blend in with all the other replies to your original comment. I have found that it is very rare that one of my grandchild+ comments attracts more upvotes than my original comment though, so I don't concern myself with these comments much.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoYes, I do. Appreciate your sharing this point.
- rg111 4y agoI upvote useful and insightful comments as soon as I read them. For direct replies to my comments, I upvote anything that is remotely helpful. If HN wanted us to have what you are suggesting, like letting them know, HN would have had notifications for comment replies. They don't. If someone spends some amount of time to write a reply or their comment is truly helpful, I let them know I read them by saying thanks in reply. I do also upvote them. Over everything, one extra upvote count does not say that it was you who upvoted it. Does it? Better to say thanks, directly if it helps you.
- tpoacher 4y agoGiven HN doesnt actually notify you of upvotes, I don't think "upvote as acknowledgment" works that much anyway. Having said that, it's true that I have a lower threshold to upvoting an insightful comment when it's a direct reply vs the general thread. And similarly, a rude comment is left intentionally ignored; I'll admit I get a bit of satisfaction in the thought that they'll never know if they were talking by themselves or I simply didn't dignify them with a response :p
- dorkwood 4y agoFor what it's worth if I left a reply and received an upvote for it, I wouldn't think "they saw my reply". I would think "someone appreciated my comment".
- Akronymus 4y agoI usually don't intentionally vote at all. And the few times I did, I actually regret upvoting. (Thankfully, votes are private)
- xtiansimon 4y agoFrequently.
- CM30 4y agoI upvote replies I consider interesting or useful, with those I don't consider useful usually getting ignored (or replied to, if I have something constructive to respond to them with and they're not flamebait). Same with any other messages here on the site.
- Smithalicious 4y agoI never vote on anything because I think upvote/downvote mechanics are toxic. Occasionally I will upvote something that is very greyed out if I think it's an interesting perspective, though (regardless of whether I agree with it).
- swat535 4y agoPersonally, I almost never downvote (unless the user is literally writing one liner responses, insulting, or spamming). The comments that are grey because they said something controversial are the ones I upvote the most. I mean if we keep downvoting all the comments we disagree with because of an emotional response to it, how will we ever have an interesting discussion? Also, I've noticed a pattern that after the depth of let's say 1-2 back and forth, the civility is often lost and the thread is no longer engaging. One should know when it is a good time to stop replying..
- maxerickson 4y agoOne line comments are often more useful than comments with wrong information.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoAlso do this. If you can't stand the idea of upvoting what you're responding to, then you're feeding the trolls. That's a thing we used to not do.