Why YSK? Comments you reply positively to, should definitely get your upvote. Comments you disagree with should be at your discretion. Trolls deserve downvotes (seriously, they live for those). Disagreeing with someone in the midst of a good discussion doesn’t necessarily warrant one, and might deserve an upvote. Even if you don’t reply, but you agree with the comment, give it your vote.
Also, this has nothing to do with propping up folks’ egos. Comments with more upvotes will likely be seen first the longer the post is up. Alternatively, downvoted posts are less likely to be seen unless users are looking for them.
Of course, this can lead to folks accusing communities of having leftist/right-wing bias, but I think overall it improves the usage of the site. Personally, the thing I liked most about Reddit was the conversations in the comments. Usually the ones with the most upvotes were more worth the read & engagement.
I disagree. Voting is low-effort participation. Leaving a comment is much higher effort. I prefer the latter.
I agree that voting is low effort participation is it is participation. The software is kind of designed to work this way. More favored posts/discussions are promoted. If nobody “promotes” anything, the wheat stays mixed in with the chaff.
But it’s a “why not both” situation. If you don’t vote, the comment won’t get featured as highly. That might not matter much for a thread with 5 comments, but when there’s 200 comments, only some of them are gonna be seen and voting defines which (not replies – after all, plenty of bad comments get tons of replies).
In addition, making a post with just a title and link with no commentary on the topic is low effort as well. It’s acceptable for things like memes as they stand on their own, but I’m already getting tired of finding what I would call news spam from select users. There’s a reason many subreddits had rules on adding comments and descriptions to a post, it was from years of dealing with drive-bys who didn’t contribute to the actual discussions.
This one is harder for me. I’m one of those people who posts an article without necessarily also writing my thoughts in the “body” box when I post it. Sometimes I do, but oftentimes I think that people don’t want to hear what I have to say about this topic; they want to hear what the article writer has to say about the topic. I try to hedge on this by writing a summary of the article in the body box if there isn’t a summary already provided. I try to save opinion for the comment section.
I don’t add commentary for news articles I am just trying to make people aware of. I may have an opinion on it but if I do put it in I do it in the comments like everyone else.
Im the same, commenting is when I want my voice heard, my votes are when i agree/like what others say
This is an excellent point! If someone’s already spoken your opinion, your upvote is you nodding, or "harumph"ing, in agreement.