[bschaefer]

...calling people who express a valid opinion on this "propellerheads" just seems unnecessarily insulting

When did "+1" become a valid opinion?

The few people who attempted to actually discuss the patch were more than drowned out by -- well -- a bunch of propellerheads.

[wlll]

It's shorthand for agreeing with the original idea. It saves space and allows a much quicker scanning of the comments to find people who have something unique to say.

If everyone wrote a short paragraph on their agreement with the original idea it would be very hard to find the comments where people were either dissenting or had something original to say.

[Dylan16807]

Is this a flaw in github? It has this nice compact list of people at the top; there's no way to join it without spamming a comment?

[xiaomai]

I like launchpad's "This bug also affects me" link. Maybe github could implement something similar.

[steveklabnik]

I'd say it's a sensible default that happens to be broken in this case. ;)

[matthewcford]

they just need up-votes - effectively a plus 1