[minus1]

I can understand the first comment getting buried. That's really the only way to discourage the behavior. On the other hand, we could be more welcoming to new posters who clearly have good intentions.

I was surprised to find there is no mention of this in the HN comment guidelines. Maybe it could be added?

Apologies for continuing with the meta.

[atiw]

But if I up vote, that doesn't let the person know I up voted it. Aren't we supposed to let people know that I care? I am not sure anonymous up voting helps so much. It only says your link is popular, but you never get to see who liked it, and then you can not find out who they are. Because you never see their profile directly.

Are we supposed to only find new HNers by reading through all comments? Isn't that kinda counter productive? We being startup founders and all, we have so less free time anyways.

Also,is there some way I can see who up voted my links?? Maybe I don't know of it, and that features exists, kinda like some other features on HN, which are intuitive, but not mentioned specifically, and you end up finding them by just noticing them or by some other post.

As a matter of fact, I found up voting this way. And yes, I can be considered new, because I really used to be crazy busy (Being a first time entrepreneur (founder and a single programmer) did that to me). Besides I didn't really feel like I had anything to say, so didn't used to comment much.

(No prior active forum-ish experience, HN is the first, and sadly the only one I can be regular at even now. I am sure other good forum-ish communities exist like HN....some day....)

[dieterrams]

> But if I up vote, that doesn't let the person know I up voted it. Aren't we supposed to let people know that I care?

I can appreciate where you're coming from, but it's a tad egocentric: 99% of the time, knowing the username of someone who upvoted you just won't matter that much, and would just be a distraction. Suppose a comment with 60 upvotes also got 60 replies saying nothing but "I like" or some variation. That page is now flooded with what is effectively spam, making it harder for people who are trying to contribute to and/or read the discussion.

If you want to stand out, just telling someone that you liked what they wrote isn't going to do that. You've got to write something worthy of notice.