Ask HN: Do you note the author of a HN comment before upvoting/replying to it?

For upvoting, no. The mods can apparently see whom I upvote, but upvotes are otherwise anonymous. I don't hesitate to upvote good comments, even in cases where there is a history of personal friction.

There are people on the site where it makes absolutely no difference what I do, replying to them will go sideways. I make a mental note of those names and check for them and usually just don't reply to them. I don't need the drama.

Once in a while, that changes. But change is typically slow and involves gradually renegotiating the relationship. It takes two people working together to make that happen. It doesn't work for me to try to do that unilaterally. There has to be some signal from their end that we are both trying to sort this out.

It is uncommon to get such a signal from a person once there is a negative history.

No, never. I mostly downvote comments when the language feels disrespectful to the parent. I typically upvote people replying to my comments because I respect that they took time to respond to me.

In some cases I do look for specific people though, for example whenever I see a post on redis, I search for "antirez" (the author) because I want to see what he has to say on the topic. I typically never up/down vote in these cases.

No. I don't know or care who anyone is or is supposed to be. If I like what someone says or want to reply, it's because of the content of the comment itself.

Not upvoting or replying, no. There are a handful of people here, though, that I respect enough that I am more likely to read their comments, and more likely to think twice if my first reaction is to disagree.

I always do a fast history check before replying. If the user is belligerent in general, I won’t reply, even if the present comment is civil. Whenever I fail to do this, I regret it.

Every now and then I'll notice the name attached to a particularly valuable post, and possibly even look them up to see what other interesting things they might have had to say, but commenters here are otherwise effectively anonymous as far as I'm concerned.

No, but sometimes I feel like others do. I often see downvoted comments with no apperant reason why.

Just dang

No