I have to admit I am a little careless with upvoting stories (I upvote a lot of stories). I upvote articles that seem to fit HN rules, generates curiosity for t

I have to admit I am a little careless with upvoting stories (I upvote a lot of stories). I upvote articles that seem to fit HN rules, generates curiosity for the audience, something critical to know (i get a lot of news from HN like sites being hacked etc), encourage a decent Show HN etc. But I upvote comments selectively. I do this to try and ensure that my vote helps to get really good quality comments on top of the page. Of course, sometimes controversial comments get a lot of upvotes. I also upvote helpful comments including when someone adds a clickable link to a Show HN in comments etc. If I learn something new with a comment, I upvote it. I sometimes upvote comments that have been downvoted incorrectly. I seldom downvote but when I do, those comments are one or more of these: 1) Blatant hate speech, personal attacks, racist remarks, sexist remarks etc. For these type of comments, I just downvote with no comments. 2) Irrelevant comment that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Comment that adds no value really and distracts from the main topic. For example, someone commenting like "NSA is coming for you" in a topic about "privacy" etc. Again, I don't add any comments for the downvote for these. 3) Factually incorrect information added as a comment. Sometimes, the commenter might not even know that they are providing false information while sometimes they don't care. In either case, I downvote those comments not because I am trying to prove them wrong but because incorrect information should be marked as such. But be careful with this. I said "factually incorrect" and not "opinionated". For these though, I always try to add a comment with an explanation. 4) Criticism that is not constructive. It is easy to say "you are so wrong" or "Why do we need another site builder" etc but it takes more to write a comment explaining how somone could have done something better. It is tempting to hit the downvote arrow for things that you "disagree" with and I am sure most of us have been guilty of this (I have been) but we should watch out for this temptation.