I mostly agree with what you've written, but I don't think this is completely reasonable: > If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame

I mostly agree with what you've written, but I don't think this is completely reasonable: > If you disagree, but are too lazy to explain why, that is very lame. I'll agree that generally it would be better for the community to explain the disagreement if nobody else has done it already, but we're allowed to be lazy if we want (and if it isn't in a way that actively worsens the site), or to just be too busy and needing to move on rather than dive into writing a potentially long comment. And in either of those cases, you could choose to therefore not downvote since you're not going to comment, but surely giving the downvote is still contributing slightly in a helpful way by sending the "a person disagrees" signal to HN's comment sorting algo, so I think it's fine to do that as a lazy option even though not as good as taking the non-lazy route!