Just tried this out: Because you need to check if params[:article_id].present? to determine if you want to load an article or comment, it ends up looking like this:

  def load_votable
    @votable = if params[:article_id].present?
      load_article
    else
      load_comment
    end
  end
  
  def load_article
    Article.find(params[:article_id])
  end
  
  def load_comment
    Comment.find(params[:comment_id])
  end

instead of what you posted. Now, I like the elegance of the load_article || load_comment, but being forced to do it the above way is a bit clunkier than I'd like, so I think I'm going to stick with the single method.