

HN Suggestion: Comments automatically upvote - Robin_Message

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.<p>This has two benefits:<p><pre><code>  1. Saves users a click when commenting
  2. Discourages people from commenting that they don't like something
</code></pre>
Downside is you can no longer give a comment and a downvote, and so cannot explain downvotes, <i>unless</i> you downvote first, then comment (not too hard to remember.)<p>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?<p>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 <i>and</i> downvotes, and what proportion are just downvoted?<p>(I regret I did not have the time to write this shorter)
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stonemetal
Disagreement 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?

