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I down-vote boring comments, pointless comments, comments by people I don't like, false comments, comments I disagree with, comments that are already down-voted
by menloparkbum 18y ago
I down-vote boring comments, pointless comments, comments by people I don't like, false comments, comments I disagree with, comments that are already down-voted, meta comments about what constitutes proper voting behavior, and accidentally hitting the down-vote arrow instead of the up-vote arrow.
I think I'm in the minority, but my position is that the arrows should be used liberally and for whatever reason a person sees fit.
I like things like voting and scores because I have a kooky personal theory that reading too much stuff online scrambles my thought processes and sometimes even makes me feel physically kind of sick. I'd rather simply ignore down-voted comments than read a well-intentioned but vacuous back-and-forth discussion about why people disagree.
There's another common notion that high scores on funny quips are a bad thing. I also disagree with this. Reading genuinely funny stuff makes me laugh and boosts my serotonin levels, which is actually good for you. The issue with this phenomena on Reddit was that funny quips that weren't actually funny started getting high votes.
Next to YouTube style comments, the worst stuff you can read online is the sort of middle range discussion between two people who sort of know what they are talking about but not really. It's like listening to two dentists on vacation talking about time-share apartments and tee times. It turns your brain into mush.
I've been here since the beginning and have not noticed any significant abuse of the voting system[1]. Most buried comments seem to deserve their scores. I wonder why this topic keeps coming up. The stark reality is if your comments consistently get down-voted, you're probably making stupid posts.
[1] aside from long ago when you could nuke someone's karma into oblivion by repeatedly downvoting everything they had ever posted.