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Thank you for the advice! I've always seen HN as a great platform for thoughtful discussion. I don't see downvoting a comment that doesn't have any replies yet

Thank you for the advice! I've always seen HN as a great platform for thoughtful discussion. I don't see downvoting a comment that doesn't have any replies yet as a way to participate in that discussion. I was genuinely curious what view point a person could have to not find my comment beneficial to the discussion. I'll try to make these queries a bit less complaint-sounding in the future! Thanks again!

dahart 8y ago
Great to hear the positive response! FWIW, initially on HN I felt pretty frustrated with what I called ‘drive-by downvotes’ with no explanation, and also just generally upset when I’d get downvoted. That’s partly because it didn’t happen that often, so it felt more serious when it did. And sometimes it feels unfair, for sure, especially when I don’t know why and it doesn’t seem warranted to me. But over the years, I’ve become more okay with the vagueness and uncertainty that comes with it. The votes are communicating something, so I try to assume I did something wrong and just maybe don’t get what it is yet. But you never know other people’s interpretations of your words, or their moods or mental states either, so sometimes I just have to let it roll off. It’s fascinating to see something I write get misinterpreted after I thought I was really clear. And I don’t see this happen that often, but because votes are used to rank the comments, sometimes people are just moving the interesting discussions up and the less interesting ones down, so there might even be nothing at all disagreeable with a comment, it’s just that there are other really good discussions nearby. Believe it or not, I actually don’t ever downvote because it bothered me to get them myself, I just ignore threads I don’t want to read and upvote threads that are interesting. I usually upvote people who reply to me as thanks for taking the time to read & reply to me, especially when they disagree with me, so that’s an example of using votes for something other than liking or agreeing or ranking. Anyway, HN does have some pretty thoughtful discussion even with the occasional downvotes, so just seek out the good stuff!

dahart 8y ago

Great to hear the positive response! FWIW, initially on HN I felt pretty frustrated with what I called ‘drive-by downvotes’ with no explanation, and also just generally upset when I’d get downvoted. That’s partly because it didn’t happen that often, so it felt more serious when it did. And sometimes it feels unfair, for sure, especially when I don’t know why and it doesn’t seem warranted to me. But over the years, I’ve become more okay with the vagueness and uncertainty that comes with it. The votes are communicating something, so I try to assume I did something wrong and just maybe don’t get what it is yet. But you never know other people’s interpretations of your words, or their moods or mental states either, so sometimes I just have to let it roll off. It’s fascinating to see something I write get misinterpreted after I thought I was really clear. And I don’t see this happen that often, but because votes are used to rank the comments, sometimes people are just moving the interesting discussions up and the less interesting ones down, so there might even be nothing at all disagreeable with a comment, it’s just that there are other really good discussions nearby. Believe it or not, I actually don’t ever downvote because it bothered me to get them myself, I just ignore threads I don’t want to read and upvote threads that are interesting. I usually upvote people who reply to me as thanks for taking the time to read & reply to me, especially when they disagree with me, so that’s an example of using votes for something other than liking or agreeing or ranking. Anyway, HN does have some pretty thoughtful discussion even with the occasional downvotes, so just seek out the good stuff!