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> No, you misread me. If one person "misreads" you, it's their problem. If everyone "misreads" you, it's your problem.

• lkrubner 16y ago
  No, its never my problem if people misread me. This isn't a game. If I said something that was true, and you misread it, then you are the one who is losing something, or missing something. Not me. I still have whatever truth or insight I may (or may not) have started with. Whether you now have it or not is something that effects you, but it does not effect me. All the same, I'm happy to explain myself at greater length, and I've made some attempt to do so in this thread. Still, you raise an interesting issue. It is rare to see anyone on Hacker New write "I'm not sure I understood you, could you please clarify what you wrote?" What is more common is to downvote a comment. A request for clarity might advance the conversation, whereas a downvote tends to bury a conversation. Among friends who trust each other, the more common reaction would be "Could you clarify that?" So downvoting becomes, in some sense, a measure of the distrust on HN, or, at least, a measure of the maximum level of good faith we are willing to extend to one another when reading one another. The thing that surprises me is that the tendency to bury a conversation is so strong, as opposed to the desire to extend a conversation.