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by iak8god
3398 days ago
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> Near the bottom, "Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I have always read that as meaning that a commenter should resist commenting about having one's own comment downvoted. The comment you responded to above was making an interesting point (I thought) about someone else being downvoted, which seemed to me to be more in line with the spirit of the guidelines. The site's approach of not giving users the power to downvote until they basically prove they're interacting in good faith (by reaching the karma threshold) reinforces the seriousness of downvotes for me. Here I'm much more conservative with them than on reddit, for instance, official reddiquette notwithstanding. |
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Since the guideline isn't specific, there's certainly room for varied interpretation. And since many people exercise their downvotes based on their own interpretation, I find I'm happier if I avoid the issue by generally not discussing downvotes unless, like here, people are genuinely curious and I feel like trying to help.
Btw, note I didn't reply directly to the downvote comments, I only jumped in late to reply to your question. My take is @mozumder made a blanket generalization about white engineers that people were reacting to, @Neutralid jumped to conclusions about why the downvotes were occurring and suggested that @mozumder's views were being suppressed ideologically, which isn't the simplest explanation, and @JoeAltmaier demonstrated one of the common interpretations of HN guidelines.
The takeaway from this is that downvotes happen, so don't worry too much, and that there's just a whole lot that can go wrong when communicating, whether it's average people talking politics, or above average engineers on HN, so use a wide berth, give benefit of the doubt, be charitable in your interpretations, and you'll have more fun. :)