Well, I’ve seen this happen to newbies who take contrarian positions.
I see it happen more to newbies who make incoherent arguments with a belligerent attitude. This is, we can hope, correlated with them taking contrarian positions. (If not we are doing something wrong.)
Obviously. On the other hand, does it really matter? The person doing so is harming themselves by wasting their time. You’re not really harmed.
I guess you’re arguing that most comments have a low number of votes, so the retaliation damages the comment-score-signal. That’s reasonable.
Well, I’ve seen this happen to newbies who take contrarian positions.
I see it happen more to newbies who make incoherent arguments with a belligerent attitude. This is, we can hope, correlated with them taking contrarian positions. (If not we are doing something wrong.)