Nobody goes around upvoting every civil comment that feeds the conversation constructively: there are too many of those and they are various in quality. Nobody

Nobody goes around upvoting every civil comment that feeds the conversation constructively: there are too many of those and they are various in quality. Nobody goes around downvoting every comment he disagrees with: there are also too many of those. Agreement/disagreement and civil/uncivil aren't the only scales involved and thinking about it in that way leads to simplistic judgments. I upvote comments that I find valuable. That may mean I learned something from the comment, but it may also mean that I think others may learn something from it. If someone makes a point that I would have made otherwise: upvote. In some sense that means I 'agree' with the comment, but if someone simply relates facts, than the upvote means 'this is relevant information'. In a non-factual case it may mean 'this is an opinion/argument that people should take note of'. Tying votes with agreement leads to groupthink Untying votes from agreement leads to no votes at all. When you upvote a comment, you by definition 'agree' that it was a proper comment. Without agreement on the 'rightness' of comments, there is no reason to upvote any comment at all. I don't understand this fear of 'groupthink'. It is perfectly clear what comments will get you a lot of karma. The fact that we don't make those comments isn't because they aren't upvoted: it's because we aren't interested in karma.