I’m primarily concerned with downvotes that nobody explains at all. As Alsadius pointed out, if someone else has already explained their reasoning well, you can simply downvote the main comment and upvote their reply.
But there are many posts that I see being downvoted for unclear reasons with no replies at all. I’ve also noticed that when I call this out by making a comment that says “why is this being downvoted,” the voting trend often reverses. This strikes me as a problem.
A year or two ago I tried replying more often with “downvoted because...”. This did not appear to have any effect beyond some karma penalty for me when my reasons for downvoting were the least bit controversial.
I’ve occasionally written well-received downvote explanations, but that only seems easy to do when the reason the parent’s being downvoted is or should be obvious to all and sundry. I gather from this that the community likes seeing people scolded who make dumb points, but doesn’t like downvote explanations in general.
(I’ll admit a fairly small sample size, though—typically I don’t downvote posts I respond to, because of the risk of sparking a retaliatory cycle.)
I’m primarily concerned with downvotes that nobody explains at all. As Alsadius pointed out, if someone else has already explained their reasoning well, you can simply downvote the main comment and upvote their reply.
But there are many posts that I see being downvoted for unclear reasons with no replies at all. I’ve also noticed that when I call this out by making a comment that says “why is this being downvoted,” the voting trend often reverses. This strikes me as a problem.
A year or two ago I tried replying more often with “downvoted because...”. This did not appear to have any effect beyond some karma penalty for me when my reasons for downvoting were the least bit controversial.
I’ve occasionally written well-received downvote explanations, but that only seems easy to do when the reason the parent’s being downvoted is or should be obvious to all and sundry. I gather from this that the community likes seeing people scolded who make dumb points, but doesn’t like downvote explanations in general.
(I’ll admit a fairly small sample size, though—typically I don’t downvote posts I respond to, because of the risk of sparking a retaliatory cycle.)