queerlilhayseedIs it rude to interrogate downvoters?
https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/casualconversation/p/691319/is-it-rude-to-interrogate-downvoters
venusaurI think the more downvotes something has, the more it causes people to read it specifically looking for the reason people downvoted, which in turn makes them more likely to downvote it than if they encountered the same thing with no votes on it. It happens with upvotes too, and it makes vote distributions tend to swing out to the poles more than they would if votes were solely “on the merits”, so to speak.
Lvxferre [he/him]There are some exceptions¹ but I typically don’t downvote people for asking why the downvotes.
That’s because I think the downvote button is an awfully vague feedback channel; it informs you people saw something they don’t like in your post/comment, but never what they did. Sometimes you can take a good guess, but it’s at most a guess, not knowledge².
In fact I wish the downvote button was multiple buttons: like “this is wrong”, “this is bad”, “this is unfunny”, etc. For this reason; it simply works better as feedback. Slashdot has a similar-ish system, but for the positive votes instead.
But I get why people voice that feedback through a downvote button: it’s fast. And also because it’s pseudo-anonymous³, so the poster can voice their take without inserting themself into the discussion. But IMO that’s a flaw, not a feature.
corsicanguppyI down-vote bad writing and spelling, sometimes. Comma splice is a huge one, but “emails” and “literally” can get a knee-jerk down-vote as well.
Punctuation is the text equivalent of prosody, the comma splice is not some “error” to be “fought against”, unlike what all those toilet paper manual styles literally screech against, they’re like those junk emails we get, comma splice is the equivalent of speaking fast and relatively uninterrupted, like I’m doing here, it’s a self-demonstrating example anyway, you probably get it, right.
…serious now. What you say in a discursive level IMO matters way, way more than how you say it.
FireWire400I do that when my comment gets more down- than upvotes, in which case I may add snarky edits to them. Don’t know why, maybe I just like being a dick sometimes.
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OBJECTION!Imo this automatic disapproval of asking for clarification is toxic and promotes circlejerks. If you got something to say to me, say it, but I’m not going to bend over backwards trying to guess what I’d have to do to appease internet strangers. That’s especially true of communities where terrible takes get massively upvoted, like that plus they won’t even voice their problem, at some point you gotta write those types off.