Why not just vote the topic up, and comment what you like? The score on the topic or comment will be high, even if there aren’t a lot of people saying “you rock” in the comments.
Voting the topic up can send signals other than agreement—I vote up articles which I find interesting but with which I disagree. Explicit (dis)agreement would reduce the noise in the up/down metric.
Also, stating agreement prior to a negative remark helps with interpretation without nonverbal clues.
Voting up fails to distinguish between the overall point, the individual arguments, the novelty of the point made, and other possible factors.
There’s a big difference between “I agree with your entire point”, “I agree with most of your arguments, but I dispute point 3 which may undermine the point being made”, and “I think you’ve made a novel and plausible point, but I disagree with it”, all of which are (for me at least) valid reasons to upvote something.
Simply voting up and commenting makes it unclear which of the above, if any, a given commenter feels.
Why not just vote the topic up, and comment what you like? The score on the topic or comment will be high, even if there aren’t a lot of people saying “you rock” in the comments.
Isn’t that the same signal?
Voting the topic up can send signals other than agreement—I vote up articles which I find interesting but with which I disagree. Explicit (dis)agreement would reduce the noise in the up/down metric.
Also, stating agreement prior to a negative remark helps with interpretation without nonverbal clues.
Voting up fails to distinguish between the overall point, the individual arguments, the novelty of the point made, and other possible factors.
There’s a big difference between “I agree with your entire point”, “I agree with most of your arguments, but I dispute point 3 which may undermine the point being made”, and “I think you’ve made a novel and plausible point, but I disagree with it”, all of which are (for me at least) valid reasons to upvote something.
Simply voting up and commenting makes it unclear which of the above, if any, a given commenter feels.
Blast… I apparently shouldn’t have gotten distracted while writing my comment. [I agree with SA.]