

Ask HN: Do you look at the submitter when up-voting? - kgermino

When deciding whether to up-vote a submission or comment are you more likely to up-vote it if the submitter is a name you recognize?
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JacobAldridge
Nope. I don't usually check the name until after I up (or down) vote, and I do
that in an attempt to better understand the community more.

It never ceases to surprise me how often I up-vote a great comment and then
discover it was pg or patio11, but those guys have also received the
occasional down-vote when I felt they'd been unhelpful or off topic.

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tokenadult
Only incidentally. Mostly, I look at the article. I recognize a lot of
submitter names after more than a year here, but I don't always notice those
when I visit the new page (or the main page) on HN. At least once, I have read
an article without even noticing that it was submitted by the one and only HN
user whom I know in offline life.

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pbhjpbhj
I've been around here for a while.

I don't bother to look at who writes what until/unless someone defames me or
argues with me. As I tend to scan the comments I skip over the points/names
line anyway.

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oldgregg
Only if it's my doppelganger old-gregg. I'll bump into that scaly man fish on
random threads now and then-- I know nothing about him except he has
insightful comments and like him I was a Rails developer in NYC... I know
you're out there and I'm watching you.

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jwegan
Considering I'm new here, there are no names I recognize. So the answer is no.

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mikeleeorg
Same here. Plus, I look at all of these headlines on Google Reader, which
doesn't display the submitter's username.

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grayrest
If I'm hit/miss on an article, I'll look at the submitter. Otherwise, I don't
really pay attention. I upvote only articles I really enjoy, which is roughly
2-3 a week so it's really not a factor.

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kgermino
That's actually what made me ask. I don't normally even check but I had just
read an article that I thought was borderline and I noticed that it was posted
by jacquesm, someone who I recognize as a regular, and voted it up. It's an
almost sub-conscience bias but I think it's interesting.

Also I tend to up-vote a-lot so it's probably more significant for me.

~~~
olefoo
Well, familiarity is the first cognitive bias, recognition is easier than
cognition. And the assumption that past good behaviour indicates future good
behaviour is a heuristic that will work most of the time.

That said, I do hope most people read the linked article before voting.

