Writing a good comment takes effort. Interesting posts are upvoted just so that they can be part of a discussion even if you are not the one starting the discussion. I do this all the time. If I feel that I can add to the discussion, I will write up a comment later.

That makes sense. I guess I just assumed that the pattern would be more like this:

1.) See headline 2.) If the user enjoyed the read, they click upvote 3.) (Maybe) comment

What you are suggesting is that it's more like this:

1.) See headline 2.) Click upvote 3.) Read link 4.) (Maybe) comment

I think you misinterpreted what codegeek wrote.

People won't comment if they feel they don't have anything of substance to add - sometimes submissions can stand on their own pretty well and thus don't solicit a lot of comments. It's about maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio. If anything I've found that you can use the karma/comment ratio as a moderately reliable indicator of link quality.

As for your original question, you should probably "lurk moar" before starting off-topic discussions. This really isn't that uncommon.

Not necessarily. codegeek's point holds for both patterns; it's a statement on upvoting a submission for potential discussion.

Because it's an incredibly interesting topic.

There's a delay between upvote and comment for interested readers.

It's because the HN algorithm treats multiple submissions as upvotes for the first submission.

So if lots of people see a new blog entry, then submit to HN, all but the first count as upclicks for the first submission.

This propels it up the ranking.

I've always assumed that some users (closely related to the pg-sphere) have heavier upvotes than others. How else would they maintain a sane frontpage?