I'm occasionally surprised by downvotes and wished I knew why they were issued, but overall I would rather permit silent downvotes than have every disagreement spawn another comment.
The tit-for-tat exchange of conflicting earnest opinions has degraded many other discussion systems. My wife used to comment a lot on a newspaper that used Facebook comments. Some articles would have hundreds of comments, with 3/4 of them coming from a small core of people rehashing fundamental differences of opinion.
Without downvoting, many people can't ignore bad comments because "someone is wrong on the internet." Leaving bad posts untouched looks like an implicit signal of community approval. But countering predictable comments with predictable responses makes the whole discussion worse.
My favorite comment chains here are ones where I upvote the original, then the counterpoint, then the refutation to the counterpoint; everyone in the chain is making good, fresh arguments or observations.
My least favorite comment chains are ones where someone opines aggressively, which spawns a sarcastic reply, which leads to a heated response... In those cases I'm happy that I can downvote everyone involved without having to add any more text.
The tit-for-tat exchange of conflicting earnest opinions has degraded many other discussion systems. My wife used to comment a lot on a newspaper that used Facebook comments. Some articles would have hundreds of comments, with 3/4 of them coming from a small core of people rehashing fundamental differences of opinion.
Without downvoting, many people can't ignore bad comments because "someone is wrong on the internet." Leaving bad posts untouched looks like an implicit signal of community approval. But countering predictable comments with predictable responses makes the whole discussion worse.
My favorite comment chains here are ones where I upvote the original, then the counterpoint, then the refutation to the counterpoint; everyone in the chain is making good, fresh arguments or observations.
My least favorite comment chains are ones where someone opines aggressively, which spawns a sarcastic reply, which leads to a heated response... In those cases I'm happy that I can downvote everyone involved without having to add any more text.