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> nuanced comments, or comments that defend both sides of an argument, tend to get ignored or downvoted. Which is sad, but makes sense—the supporters of either
by rockbruno 4y ago
> nuanced comments, or comments that defend both sides of an argument, tend to get ignored or downvoted. Which is sad, but makes sense—the supporters of either side are the ones who care enough to interact, and they’re not going to signal-boost the opposition.
I actually don't think this is entirely true. I definitely sometimes see people using downvotes as a "I don't like this, fuck you" button a-la Reddit, but most of the times I feel that HN is very civilized when it comes to using the downvote button.
- superb-owl 4y agoAgreed - I think they mainly get ignored. I mostly see things downvoted that are factually wrong, or just generally abrasive and tone-deaf.
- Brian_K_White 4y agoI can't know but I think I see a fair amount of downvotes arising from misunderstanding. I am excluding my own downvotes received and given and only thinking of examples where I was a bystander (except that I probably upvoted someone to counter what I thought was undeserved downvotes). I can't know that someone else misunderstood a comment, or that I understood a comment of course, so I just leave my own comment saying "I interpreted that this way...." But I have seen some truely inexplicable torpedoing of the most innocuous comments. I never get an answer to "I don't know why you're downvoted..." Please assume that I know the difference between interesting or valuable and flies my team colors, or at least gave conscious thought to it, in this talk about deserved/undeserved, understood/misunderstood.