Don't feed the trolls! If a comment is bad enough for me to want to downvote it I certainly don't want to engage the author in conversation. In fact, by downvot

Don't feed the trolls! If a comment is bad enough for me to want to downvote it I certainly don't want to engage the author in conversation. In fact, by downvoting I hope to push the comment further down so there to let the better comments float up and to make it less likely it will start a stupid pointless argument thread, replying would do the oposite usually. Also, I think that, in general, quoting in comments tends to lead to lower quality comments. It's a lot easier to do a point by point nitpick than the write a proper response to the ideas contained in the parent post.