I hope the voting system will work here as the other community policing here has: not necessarily to agree or disagree with the content of a comment but as a way to approve or disapprove of how a comment is offered.
I mean, yes, definitely vote down trolls and those who have nothing significant to say but chime in with a “me, too!” or somesuch. Definitely vote down wild screaming vulgarity and pointless name-calling and other abuse.
I hope, though, that readers will not vote down well-written, thoughtful comments with which they merely disagree. Use that disagreement for a comment of substance and wit of your own in rebuttal.
Wit and humor is always deserving of an up vote. But don’t feel the need to vote on every comment: If you disagree with a comment but can’t fault its presentation, then simply slide on by to the next comment without voting.
The comment voting is a new thing here, and I know some readers are little nervous about it. I trust that we’re all smart enough and interested enough in intelligent, provocative, fun conversation to make it work to our collective advantage. If it starts to seem like it’s more disruptive than helpful, it is but the work of moments for me to strip out that code and eliminate the voting. But let’s give everyone some time to get used to it and figure out how to use it the Flick Filosopher way.
On the subject: it’s a minor detail, but you might want to implement an IP block so we can’t upvote our own comments… not that it really matters in the long run. I’m not sure if comment IPs are stored, but if so it would be pretty simple to compare the commenter to the voter.
It’s not all that big a deal, as I said. And I’ll probably get bored of upvoting myself eventually. Maybe!
But then how else would I get upvoted?