[shoemai]

If I'm on reddit and had to reload the page for every upvote/downvote, comment expand/collapse, show more comments, and reply the ux would be significantly worse. And thats not even a site that has that much user interaction.

[roywiggins]

You can do async upvoting without Javascript if you abuse a GET request loaded in an iframe. Comment collapse can be done if you abuse CSS and checkboxes.

These aren't really GOOD ideas, but someone who really, really doesn't want to use Javascript has options.

[jrickert]

Indeed, Hacker News' one piece of JavaScript is for the upvote mechanic.