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.)
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.)