4 ms·

Ask HN: What's the purpose of the upvote

8 points by kolodny 12y ago

I was just reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9237063 and it seems that there's some disagreement about the proper usage of the upvote feature. If it's used to indicate a well thought out and structured point, then how do people convey agreement with that point? If it's used to convey agreement, then how do we make sure that things that don't contribute to the conversation?

a3n 12y ago
"I believe this story or comment contributes to the community good in some way, and I would like to see more like this." I think comment downvotes are supposed to be the opposite of the above, but in practice it seems to be used to say "I don't agree with you," or "you don't know what you're talking about." Mere agreement or disagreement should probably be handled with a comment, to further the conversation. You could easily disagree with a comment, but upvote it, if you thought it contributed something worthwhile. There are Guidelines and a FAQ at the bottom of most pages.
- smeyer 12y ago
  If you're interested in the goals of the site creators/administrators (as in the Guidelines and FAQ) also have a look at pg's comments on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 .
brudgers 12y ago
It's used to upvote. People upvote for many different reasons. On average the aggregate of upvoting improves HN without worrying about why. The same is true for downvoting. Downvoting becomes available above a certain karma threshold. Abuse of either, i.e. using them in ways that are known to be detrimental to HN historically can result in various sanctions by the moderators (none of which are explicitly stated). So vote something up if you think it should be voted up. It's that simple.
patmcc 12y ago
I'm a lot freer with upvotes than downvotes - I use upvotes for both agreement and good comments, but will downvote only for clearly poor quality comments / trolls.
SamReidHughes 12y ago
Voting affects the ordering of comments. You should vote based on how you want comments ordered. Pro tip: If you downvote comments you don't upvote, you get twice the voting power. (^^ or really, don't do this, treat voting more as a pavlovian thing.)

8 points by kolodny 12y ago

a3n 12y ago

"I believe this story or comment contributes to the community good in some way, and I would like to see more like this." I think comment downvotes are supposed to be the opposite of the above, but in practice it seems to be used to say "I don't agree with you," or "you don't know what you're talking about." Mere agreement or disagreement should probably be handled with a comment, to further the conversation. You could easily disagree with a comment, but upvote it, if you thought it contributed something worthwhile. There are Guidelines and a FAQ at the bottom of most pages.

smeyer 12y ago
If you're interested in the goals of the site creators/administrators (as in the Guidelines and FAQ) also have a look at pg's comments on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 .

brudgers 12y ago

It's used to upvote. People upvote for many different reasons. On average the aggregate of upvoting improves HN without worrying about why. The same is true for downvoting. Downvoting becomes available above a certain karma threshold. Abuse of either, i.e. using them in ways that are known to be detrimental to HN historically can result in various sanctions by the moderators (none of which are explicitly stated). So vote something up if you think it should be voted up. It's that simple.

patmcc 12y ago

I'm a lot freer with upvotes than downvotes - I use upvotes for both agreement and good comments, but will downvote only for clearly poor quality comments / trolls.

SamReidHughes 12y ago

Voting affects the ordering of comments. You should vote based on how you want comments ordered. Pro tip: If you downvote comments you don't upvote, you get twice the voting power. (^^ or really, don't do this, treat voting more as a pavlovian thing.)