I'm from the school where I read the article before deciding to upvote. Unfortunately, if the article is interesting, I read it all the way through and forget to come back and upvote it. In this case the subject of the article reminded me to upvote, but I think it would be a good idea to put the reminder at the end of the article as well.
I'm in the same boat as him where I'll submit everything I write, watch 400 people read it on google analytics, and never get a comment of an upvote. It's sort of frustrating because I'm submitting my writing specifically to get feedback, but I also realize that if something is truly interesting to me, I'm more likely to hop straight to twitter to share it.
>It's sort of frustrating because I'm submitting my writing specifically to get feedback...
Personally, I'm hesitant to give feedback or even comment unless I think I have something unique to offer or have an unusually strong feeling about the material.
I think a large part of it is the generally combative stance many people seem to default into online.
I quickly got tired of "So, what have you done better?" responses to what I think is polite, constructive criticism or a "What does this add to the discussion?" quip as a result of posting a simple show of appreciation.
I'm theorizing it's an overcompensation from the transformation of certain aggregators into something like a backpatting / validation request line.
It's also always amazing to me how few people upvote an article. Like something on the front page getting tens of thousands of votes, that people clearly like, and usually only a few hundred can be bothered to click a little arrow.
I rarely upvote because doing so on HN automatically adds that article to your Saved section. I prefer to keep this section only for submissions to which I'd want to come back later (and I'm unsure if the "upvote to save" behavior can be changed).
Either way, view this as a great lesson in why getting conversions can be so tough. A person better have a very persuasive case for a stranger to go out of their way and click a button.
I'm in the same boat : Just because I like an article doesn't mean I want it saved to my permanent list. I would be very interested if there is a way to change this behavior as I would then upvote far more articles.
The saved section makes me more selective in terms of what merits an upvote. I will confess/admit/proclaim that the position of an article within the stack also influences my upvoting. In other words, my standard for upvoting is lower on the New page than the front page.
I tend to upvote articles that I read and find interesting. It's very easy to do, so perhaps they didn't find it interesting and as insightful as you did?
