[otrahuevada]

Sorry for being this direct, I know it can be viewed as impolite but please bear with me for a second.

If you want curious conversations to occur, then please consider forcing downvotes to prompt a conversation by having to respond instead of perpetuating a situation where jingoism runs rampant and simple innocuous expressions of actual genuine curiosity get taken down for no real reason other than said jingoism then.

What you get otherwise is merely the appearance of a conversation, based around the 4 or so responses the invisible minority that as far as anyone knows astroturfed itself into your good graces can tolerate. This, coincidentally, is pretty much what you see on most topics here that are not strictly about some tech or another.

[dang]

Forcing people to give reasons for downvoting wouldn't evoke curiosity out of anybody—just a lot of petty bickering and nitpicking. All my experience here tells me that it would make things worse.

If you want to make points about discussion quality and have them taken seriously, you should first stop posting things like "Oh noes the "big words hurt my feelings" crowd got to me what will I ever do" for quite a while.