[reitanqild]

Not sure how to vote this:

Totally agree with the first part.

The second part describes a thing I regularily do as "pretty creepy". To clarify: before deciding to flag, downvote or vouch for someone I might have a look at their comment history to see if I am misunderstanding something.

Also if someone posts something nice I look through their history to find more good comments.

I don't think I'm the only one who does this and in fact I'd recommend it instead of blindly thinking "troll" and hit downvote and flag whenever one sees something one doesn't agree with.

[dragonwriter]

Downote is for comments that don't contribute positively to the discussion. Flagging is for more egregious violations of community guidelines.

Whether a comment deserves either of those does not in any way depend on the commenter's posting history and to reference posting history in applying them is problematic in a manner akin to the ad hominem fallacy, in that it substitutes a general judgement of the source of an utterance when what is called for is a judgement on the utterance itself.

[throwaway66666]

I did not mean to offend you. And I am sorry I used that terminology. To me it felt odd that if you reach the front page suddenly eyes are looking at your history and everything you have done.

If you put yourself out there, suddenly eyes are watching everything. That seemed a bit scary (and again sorry for using emotional words), though of course makes sense why it happens.

But in general, I fully agree with you. There are many reasons to do it, and perhaps it's even helpful when something is not clear and you want to understand better where someone is coming from, as you said.

Apologies again.

[reitanqild]

> If you put yourself out there, suddenly eyes are watching everything. That seemed a bit scary (and again sorry for using emotional words), though of course makes sense why it happens.

I'm painfully aware. Which is why I often use this account :-)

> Apologies again.

No need for that after you cleared it up. I might even have been too harsh myself. I actually prefer if there is some room for thought here and I might have read more into your original post than you intended.