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HN Suggestion: Comments automatically upvote
Since we expect people to comment in order to add to discussion, it seems that any comment should be counted as an upvote of the parent comment/article/both.
This has two benefits:
1. Saves users a click when commenting
2. Discourages people from commenting that they don't like something
Downside is you can no longer give a comment and a downvote, and so cannot explain downvotes, unless you downvote first, then comment (not too hard to remember.)
This also raises the question to me: What's downvoting for? Since something sitting at 1 is unlikely to be seen anyway, and flag exists for pointless posts, it basically exists so the community can fight about what it is interested in, with faction A voting up and faction B voting down. Is that worthwhile?
Perhaps PG can tell us: how many downvotes are there in proportion to upvotes? Of the articles/comments that get downvoted, what proportion receive a significant number of upvotes and downvotes, and what proportion are just downvoted?
(I regret I did not have the time to write this shorter)
- stonemetal 17y agoDisagreement is not something to be discouraged. Echo chambers happen easily enough that they don't need encouragement. What if I want to ask a question? Should I have to down vote someone so that I don't automatically up vote just to seek clarification of a point?