

Ask HN: How many of you upvote before reading? - jkaljundi

Just curious, do many of you upvote HN links before actually opening and reading them? If yes, is it based on the author, domain or just the headline? Do you sometimes feel sorry you upvoted after readingthe link?
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BasDirks
Yes, I upvote links that I would like to see the community talk about, even if
I haven't yet read the article, and in rare cases if I don't even plan on
reading it. Of course this differs case-by-case, but I use my vote to
stimulate conversation.

Like teej said, often the comments are more valuable than the link.

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Locke1689
An upvote/upmod is also called a "save." If you look in your profile, you can
see all of the submissions you have upmodded under "saved stories." There have
been a couple times where I glance at a story, know it's interesting and
something I want to read later, and upmod it to save it for later.

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code
Instapaper is your best friend. It'll avoid upvoting links unnecessarily and
allow you to read stuff later perfectly fine.

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lloeki
Once you read the story in Instapaper it can be a pain to find it again on HN
and upvote it though.

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code
I save the HN post itself, not the endlink. It's better in case you want to
comment rather than go straight to the article. And since you saved the HN
link, you can always easily navigate to the article later. I don't read in
instapaper itself, I go direct to link. Instapaper is just a really efficient
bookmarking tool for me.

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Osiris
Is anyone going to admit to this?

I have done it before, rarely, but only on new submissions if the article
sounds interesting enough to deserve some traction.

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teej
I'll openly admit to it. The comments on Hacker News are more valuable than
the link itself. I will upvote a link with a good discussion often without
ever reading the article.

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dclaysmith
I try and give any genuine "Show HN"/Need Feedback links an upvote. I also
always check them out but I'm sure I've upvoted first only to find out it was
"Show HN Spam" if there is such a thing.

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jokermatt999
Never, but I only upvote 2 or 3 stories a day. Comments, I'll admit I
occasionally upvote them before finishing them if they make a very good point
in the first half. Occasionally I've wanted to take it back because they made
a completely unnecessary snarky remark at the end of it, but not often.

However, that does lead me to point out that I think the upvote/downvote
arrows and the user's name should be at the bottom of a comment instead of the
top.

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geuis
_Almost_ never. I don't care who the HN member is, so that doesn't play into
it. The only time I'll upvote something without clicking on it is if I read
the article from another source previously. Usually the headline matches or is
close to the original piece, a quick glance at the domain, and a hover over
the headline to verify the url will do it. At most, I think I do this maybe 3x
a week at most.

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yread
I sometimes upvote an article before I finished reading it and then I want to
take it back when I realize it wasn't up to HN standard.

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stuhacking
You mean when it wasn't up to _your_ standard?

The total number of upvotes on an article determines what the wider HN
community thinks of it.

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ahmedaly
It's a rare condition when I upvote before reading.. but I do it from a time
to another.. if I find something exciting.

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sliverstorm
I sometimes upvote comments halfway through reading, but I don't do that with
articles.

(I confess I upvote only a _very_ few articles)

