You don’t have to break a rule to be downvoted; someone just had to find your comment substantially less valuable than the average. However, downvoting someone for expressing assent has been explicitly discouraged.
Not only that, I have also noticed that if you ask why you were downvoted, the downvoted comment usually gets voted back up. I have no idea why this is, but it happened with another of my posts. I think that one fluctuated above and below and finally rested on 0.
I’d guess that asking why you were downvoted makes other people think about why you were downvoted, and hence think about voting you up or down, which both overrides the previous vote since people vote to move numbers towards where they think they should be and also changes the mix of voters.
It may also simply draw attention to the comment thread due to people seeing the “why downvoted?” comment appear in the recents comment list. The more people reading a comment, the more who may vote on it. Inexplicable downvotes tend to persist more in long comment threads, low on the page, on older posts.
You don’t have to break a rule to be downvoted; someone just had to find your comment substantially less valuable than the average. However, downvoting someone for expressing assent has been explicitly discouraged.
Not only that, I have also noticed that if you ask why you were downvoted, the downvoted comment usually gets voted back up. I have no idea why this is, but it happened with another of my posts. I think that one fluctuated above and below and finally rested on 0.
I’d guess that asking why you were downvoted makes other people think about why you were downvoted, and hence think about voting you up or down, which both overrides the previous vote since people vote to move numbers towards where they think they should be and also changes the mix of voters.
It may also simply draw attention to the comment thread due to people seeing the “why downvoted?” comment appear in the recents comment list. The more people reading a comment, the more who may vote on it. Inexplicable downvotes tend to persist more in long comment threads, low on the page, on older posts.