I’ve mostly tried to avoid upvoting so far, and I’ve completely avoided downvoting.
My model for upvoting right now is:
If I’ve commented on a post, I should upvote it, because if it was good enough to comment on, then it was good enough to upvote.
If a post or comment is particularly well thought-out, well-reasoned, or otherwise showing an understandable mastery of the issue at hand, it’s worth considering upvoting it.
Don’t upvote unless I’m absolutely confident, because I don’t want to go skewing the statistics here, and I’m also pretty new at this.
My model for downvoting has been:
Don’t do it until you know why other people do it (hence this post).
I’ve also been trying to understand why posts get comments and up/downvotes, but the two don’t seem to correlate well. So are there different rules for upvoting comments versus posts?
Some good posts don’t get many comments, perhaps because they’ve covered the subject thoroughly
I think posts are more likely to get a lot of comments if they’re controversial or have the effect of encouraging people to talk about personal experience.
There’s always going to be a difference between “what criteria for downvoting would make everyone better off” and “what criteria do people actually use”. People will downvote to shut up opposing views, not because that’s a good reason to downvote, but because dinging someone the −1 karma for an opposing view is more effective than not doing so and nobody’s going to stop them.
I’ve mostly tried to avoid upvoting so far, and I’ve completely avoided downvoting.
My model for upvoting right now is:
If I’ve commented on a post, I should upvote it, because if it was good enough to comment on, then it was good enough to upvote.
If a post or comment is particularly well thought-out, well-reasoned, or otherwise showing an understandable mastery of the issue at hand, it’s worth considering upvoting it.
Don’t upvote unless I’m absolutely confident, because I don’t want to go skewing the statistics here, and I’m also pretty new at this.
My model for downvoting has been:
Don’t do it until you know why other people do it (hence this post).
I’ve also been trying to understand why posts get comments and up/downvotes, but the two don’t seem to correlate well. So are there different rules for upvoting comments versus posts?
Some good posts don’t get many comments, perhaps because they’ve covered the subject thoroughly
I think posts are more likely to get a lot of comments if they’re controversial or have the effect of encouraging people to talk about personal experience.
There’s always going to be a difference between “what criteria for downvoting would make everyone better off” and “what criteria do people actually use”. People will downvote to shut up opposing views, not because that’s a good reason to downvote, but because dinging someone the −1 karma for an opposing view is more effective than not doing so and nobody’s going to stop them.