For what it’s worth, I was another (the other?) person who downvoted the comment in question early (having upvoted the post, mostly for explaining an unfamiliar interesting thing clearly).
Catching up on all this has been a little odd to me. I’m obviously not a culture lord, but also my vote wasn’t about this question of “the bar” except (not that I would naturally frame it this way) perhaps as far as I read CoolShirtMcPants as doing something similar to what you said you were doing—”here is my considered position on this, I encourage people to try it on and attend to specifically how it might come out as I imply”—and you as creating an impasse instead of recognizing that and trying to draw out more concrete arguments/scenarios/evidence. Or that even if CSMP wasn’t intentionally doing that, a “bar” should ask that you treat the comment that way.
On one hand, sure, the situation wasn’t quite symmetric. And it was an obvious, generic-seeming objection, surely already considered at least by the author and better-expressed in other comments. But on the other hand, it can still be worth saying for the sake of readers or for starting a more substantive conversation; CSMP at least tried to dig a little deeper. And in this kind of blogging I don’t usually see one person’s (pseudonymously or otherwise) staking out some position as stronger evidence than another’s doing so. Neither should really get you further than deciding it’s worth thinking about for yourself. This case wasn’t an exception.
(I waffled on saying anything at all here because your referendum, if there is one, appears to have grown beyond this, and all this stuff about status seems to me to be a poor framing. But reading votes is a tricky business, so I can at least provide more information.)
For what it’s worth, I was another (the other?) person who downvoted the comment in question early (having upvoted the post, mostly for explaining an unfamiliar interesting thing clearly).
Catching up on all this has been a little odd to me. I’m obviously not a culture lord, but also my vote wasn’t about this question of “the bar” except (not that I would naturally frame it this way) perhaps as far as I read CoolShirtMcPants as doing something similar to what you said you were doing—”here is my considered position on this, I encourage people to try it on and attend to specifically how it might come out as I imply”—and you as creating an impasse instead of recognizing that and trying to draw out more concrete arguments/scenarios/evidence. Or that even if CSMP wasn’t intentionally doing that, a “bar” should ask that you treat the comment that way.
On one hand, sure, the situation wasn’t quite symmetric. And it was an obvious, generic-seeming objection, surely already considered at least by the author and better-expressed in other comments. But on the other hand, it can still be worth saying for the sake of readers or for starting a more substantive conversation; CSMP at least tried to dig a little deeper. And in this kind of blogging I don’t usually see one person’s (pseudonymously or otherwise) staking out some position as stronger evidence than another’s doing so. Neither should really get you further than deciding it’s worth thinking about for yourself. This case wasn’t an exception.
(I waffled on saying anything at all here because your referendum, if there is one, appears to have grown beyond this, and all this stuff about status seems to me to be a poor framing. But reading votes is a tricky business, so I can at least provide more information.)