I'd like to imagine I have a consistent pattern in my voting, but it's probably affected by my mood as much as anything. If I'm grumpy, I downvote, and might be

I'd like to imagine I have a consistent pattern in my voting, but it's probably affected by my mood as much as anything. If I'm grumpy, I downvote, and might be guilty of upvoting argumentative comments. If I'm in a good mood, I'll upvote things for being encouraging or insightful. One general rule I tend to stick to is downvoting lazy comments: * Using your age as evidence you are right * Invoking "clickbait" because an otherwise interesting article has an interesting headline * Moaning about downvotes, the OP not having read the article, or about HN having inconsistent hivemind just like Reddit. * Hackneyed criticisms, especially when they're off-topic - e.g. "why doesn't this site support users without JavaScript?" or "70s programmers did this so much better" My problem with upvotes is that a confident, well-written, persuasive comment on a topic about which I know nothing could very well be complete BS. Since I don't know the subject matter or the OP, I have no idea whether it's authoritative.