To me, a comment saying “this is a good post that you should read” communicates an upvote plus the identity of the upvoter, and therefore seems primarily a social move.
That sounds about right, but I think there’s a few aspects that make that social move valuable:
a) on regular posts in regular circumstances, since comments are a bit higher effort than votes, and comments are at least somewhat more rewarding that votes (at least for me, as an author), I think it’s good for at least a couple people to respond “this was great!”. Writing a flawless excellent post and then receive upvotes-but-crickets-chirping is a sort of sad experience. I think if 2-3 people have already written such a comment it gets a bit repetitive but I think it’s a fine norm.
b) there’s a practical element for replying to a post which is that it bumps the post to the top of recent discussion and gives it a bit more life. I think this is bad-in-excess, but fine in moderation – if a post is still good 2 years later, it’s good to give it periodic spikes of attention.
c) In particular, a comment two years after-the-fact that says “I just found this after two years and it still seems good” is conveying additional information beyond “I liked it” – it’s saying something about how time-tested the content.
Nod. This makes sense as a thing people might vary quite a bit on. (To be clear, I certainly get dramatically more value out comments that actually engage). It’d be pretty reasonable for you to throw up a question-post about it or something.
That sounds about right, but I think there’s a few aspects that make that social move valuable:
a) on regular posts in regular circumstances, since comments are a bit higher effort than votes, and comments are at least somewhat more rewarding that votes (at least for me, as an author), I think it’s good for at least a couple people to respond “this was great!”. Writing a flawless excellent post and then receive upvotes-but-crickets-chirping is a sort of sad experience. I think if 2-3 people have already written such a comment it gets a bit repetitive but I think it’s a fine norm.
b) there’s a practical element for replying to a post which is that it bumps the post to the top of recent discussion and gives it a bit more life. I think this is bad-in-excess, but fine in moderation – if a post is still good 2 years later, it’s good to give it periodic spikes of attention.
c) In particular, a comment two years after-the-fact that says “I just found this after two years and it still seems good” is conveying additional information beyond “I liked it” – it’s saying something about how time-tested the content.
I’d be interested in a poll on this, since I don’t have this experience for comments that don’t build on the content of the post.
Nod. This makes sense as a thing people might vary quite a bit on. (To be clear, I certainly get dramatically more value out comments that actually engage). It’d be pretty reasonable for you to throw up a question-post about it or something.
Have thrown up the question post.