

Tell HN: Things that should change regarding voting - evo_9

If you take the time to comment on an article, then it should automatically upvote the article. Even if you don&#x27;t agree with the article, and you are commenting to contend it, still the article in question is generating debate which is a good thing.<p>Similarly f you have setup a poll, and people vote, their vote should upvote the entire poll.<p>I&#x27;ve submitted enough articles and done a few polls and it&#x27;s puzzling to me that people will actually respond to the poll yet not upvote it. So the poll might have 50 responses, but sinks into oblivion without much consideration.<p>Similarly articles will vanish that have had plenty of discussion but no upvoting.<p>I&#x27;m not trying to make it so that everything gives you karma, that&#x27;s the last thing we need on here. But it&#x27;s a little disappointing to setup a poll or find an interesting article, see lots of comments&#x2F;activity but have it vanish before the greater HN audience notices it.<p>Not that these ideas will be implemented, similar to how a good portion wish links opened in a new window and while I get &#x27;don&#x27;t change it&#x27;, I still don&#x27;t get, and will never ever get why it&#x27;s not a user preference that is OFF by default. Then if you actually care about it you can at least opt-in and turn it on.<p>I guess it&#x27;s tricky to implement? Joking... I mean seriously it&#x27;s like 5m of work to add the open window preference thing.
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dang
You touch on a paradox I've been remembering lately. I noticed a long time ago
how I would read an excellent article or comment, take a long time to write a
response, and then later realize I'd completely forgotten to upvote the
excellent post in the first place.

The more I think about this the more revealing it seems. Clicking a vote arrow
is a reflexive response; thinking about content is a reflective one. Those two
things (reflexive vs. reflective) seem to engage different parts of the brain.
It's the latter that we want to encourage, so it's not good that the former is
what we use to rank things.

Unfortunately it isn't as simple as "commenting on a story should upvote it".
That would be great if we could count just the thoughtful comments on
substantive stories. Widening the criterion to _any comment_ , though, would
add more noise than signal. It's definitely not true that all debate is good.
Flamewars are the most active debates of all.

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krapp
> Similarly articles will vanish that have had plenty of discussion but no
> upvoting.

Apparently, that trips the flamewar detector. Not just _downvoting_ , mind
you, but merely engaging in enough conversation which hasn't been sufficiently
upvoted, will sink a thread.

