[winstonchecksin]

What’s the criteria for a “bad comment”? And how do you objectively evaluate it?

I lurk and post once in a while. What I’ve noticed is that rarely is something downvoted for being factually incorrect (relatively speaking). You just have to offer a perspective that doesn’t conform with the hive mind and the downvoting essentially amounts to censorship of opinions.

[philipkglass]

Most of the comments I downvote the official comment guidelines in the section "In Comments" here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When I see heated back-and-forth discussion chains I'll often find myself downvoting several comments and upvoting none of them, because sarcastic quippy retorts to bad comments are also bad comments.

I'll also downvote comments for factual inaccuracy, particularly if I don't have the time to patiently correct them. This only partially mitigates the damage and doesn't really help the original author to learn. When someone writes a comment with just a single big mistake, and they don't seem to have a history of willfully repeating it, that's when I am most likely to write a lengthy reply with explanation and citations.

[scpedicini]

Anything which is Reddit level of quality in terms of contributing value. For example, low hanging puns that add no actual substantial information.

[jjnoakes]

I'd appreciate some examples. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but in my experience downvoted comments tend to have something beyond a counterpoint or difference of opinion; their content is usually irrelevant or unnecessarily snarky or somehow hostile.

[hn8788]

I don't really have the time to go digging around for examples, but it's common enough that one of the site rules is to not complain about downvotes because it frequently happens for no reason.

[jjnoakes]

The comment author may think there was no reason but almost every time I see a comment complaining about being downvoted, I see a reason among those I listed above.

[Blikkentrekker]

It also depends on time hours.

I once made a post that criticized the Anglocentric perspective of an article. — it was initially upvoted, but then became downvoted when UTC+2 went to sleep, and then upvoted again when UTC+2 woke up. — one can take a particular guess as to why.

[r00fus]

For me the fuzzy litmus is whether it "promotes knowledge or aids the discussion".

Despite whether I agree with it, I upvote anything that I learn something new from.

Factual incorrectness is often downvoted, but usually only if there is a reply that points it out.