I'm not so sure about that. Downvotes are as much an indicator of outspokenness as they are that one's post is repugnant. Unfortunately lots of people love to downvote posts they do not agree with, or don't support their chosen side
I'm not sure that's exactly what they meant. If someone writes a comment with an incorrect fact, it's common to see it downvoted. It also happens with rude or humorous comments.
But it also happens with opinions, no matter how thoughtful, rational and well written the comment is. Even with true facts that someone happens to dislike. I'm avoiding certain topics as long as I can and following pg's advice in What you can't say. It's not worth it. Actually I'm avoiding most topics that I find interesting directly for me, begining with the technical ones.
I would also like a new feature in HN: giving up the right to vote.
You’re avoiding certain topics, even ones you are interested in because of the downvote behavior, impacting even “thoughtful, rational and well written” comments?
Please let me know if I’ve misread you. But interesting.
Specially the ones I'm interested. It's mostly others' comments that I see downvoted. With mine I see another problem: responses use to be completely unrelated to the point I was trying to make.
I'm not an English native speaker and ellaborating in technical topics is more difficult than in pop-sci or net folklore. Spending a long time composing a comment just to see it misunderstood or downvoted is discouraging.
If you take a look at my recent comments, there was someone complaining that he could not control his browser completely. I've had some success using Chromium Embedded Framework. I suggested that and got a -2. Why? I don't know, because it was a post about Firefox? So what? Someone that disliked another thing I said?
It doesn't matter, but it happens to be my most technical comment in weeks, maybe months. Other of my comments with platitudes are much upvoted.
Most discussions are polarized. Sometimes I start to write a comment writing a disclaimer saying that I'm not in side X, but... when I notice that, I stop and cancel. And that's not only politics or bigco.
I completely understand you, friend. Personally given up trying to pacify other commenters and just speak my truths. That doesn’t mean going out of my way to offend people with my words, I try hard to NOT do that-but I’m also not going out of my way to appease them either.
I think the problem with downvotes is that they tend to make the comment invisible. Initial downvotes don't reflect the community unless it's a general consensus (political flame bait).
They get buried and then no one ever sees them to upvote. The visibility in the absence of raw numbers works as a reference and sometimes it is misleading.
