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Ehh... I don't really understand the impulse to "call out" downvotes, or ask people to explain why they're downvoting something that you wrote or agree with. I

Ehh... I don't really understand the impulse to "call out" downvotes, or ask people to explain why they're downvoting something that you wrote or agree with. It's probably just my age, as I started out online when most discussion forums lacked explicit voting mechanisms. Before social media came along, and "gamified" human conversation. Maybe it helps police trolls, but at the cost of encouraging group-think and excessive meme-referencing, and just making a lot of people more neurotic and insecure in general. Overall, I think that online discussion is worse than it was 15 years ago, due to the psychological effects of all the imaginary Internet points. But anyhoo, at the time I saw this (45 minutes after my original comment), my comment had 25 votes and was the top-most thing on this page. More often than not, if you wait an hour, the crowd straightens out the impact of any early outliers.

rootlocus 9y ago
There's a difference between downvoting because you don't like the tone or don't agree on something subjective and downvoting because something is incorrect or inaccurate. If people downvote because it's incorrect I'd like to know what's incorrect about it. > But anyhoo, at the time I saw this (45 minutes after my original comment), my comment had 25 votes and was the top-most thing on this page. It was grayed out at the bottom of the page when I saw it.
reitanqild 9y ago
Ehh... I don't really understand the impulse to "call out" downvotes, or ask people to explain why they're downvoting something that you wrote or agree with. Sometimes there is some really weird voting dynamic here and it would be interesting to know what goes on. For a lack of a better word you can call it intellectual curiosity or something.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  I can't remember the last time I saw a reasonable comment more than a half hour or so old greyed out. But I often see highly-voted comment with an old greyed-out reply saying "why is this being downvoted". All that's happening is that the sample size of votes is too small early on to be meaningful.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    But I still often wonder about the motivation for those early downvoters. And I'll still hold that this is acceptable curiosity.
    - oblib 9y ago
      I agree with that. I too was curious about why someone downvoted a comment I made the other day. I can honestly say I don't worry about losing a point over that since I've not looked into how points work much but I thought it was odd that someone would do that without explaining what motivated them.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > But I often see highly-voted comment with an old greyed-out reply saying "why is this being downvoted". Many times it's because the user was just asking a question, or made what they thought was a perfectly reasonable comment. HN is pretty horrible with voting etiquette.

rootlocus 9y ago

There's a difference between downvoting because you don't like the tone or don't agree on something subjective and downvoting because something is incorrect or inaccurate. If people downvote because it's incorrect I'd like to know what's incorrect about it. > But anyhoo, at the time I saw this (45 minutes after my original comment), my comment had 25 votes and was the top-most thing on this page. It was grayed out at the bottom of the page when I saw it.

reitanqild 9y ago

Ehh... I don't really understand the impulse to "call out" downvotes, or ask people to explain why they're downvoting something that you wrote or agree with. Sometimes there is some really weird voting dynamic here and it would be interesting to know what goes on. For a lack of a better word you can call it intellectual curiosity or something.

sanderjd 9y ago
I can't remember the last time I saw a reasonable comment more than a half hour or so old greyed out. But I often see highly-voted comment with an old greyed-out reply saying "why is this being downvoted". All that's happening is that the sample size of votes is too small early on to be meaningful.
- reitanqild 9y ago
  But I still often wonder about the motivation for those early downvoters. And I'll still hold that this is acceptable curiosity.
  - oblib 9y ago
    I agree with that. I too was curious about why someone downvoted a comment I made the other day. I can honestly say I don't worry about losing a point over that since I've not looked into how points work much but I thought it was odd that someone would do that without explaining what motivated them.
- flukus 9y ago
  > But I often see highly-voted comment with an old greyed-out reply saying "why is this being downvoted". Many times it's because the user was just asking a question, or made what they thought was a perfectly reasonable comment. HN is pretty horrible with voting etiquette.