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Comment by asdff

21 hours ago

It is interesting seeing the shift in tone from when you drop into an old forum thread from 25 years ago vs a similar sort of discussion today. People tend to always take the contrary opinion and argue it to death. Sometimes I find myself even reflexively wanting to do that and I have to stop myself because what is even the point? Sure there would be people getting at it in the forums but it would usually be like 2 people going back and forth while everyone else sits back and waits for them to cool off or embarrass themselves. You get dogpiled today easily. Especially on systems with up and down votes, people get bathed in downvotes for valid but not-in-vogue-with-hivemind opinions. I'm not even talking about political stuff either but opinions on technical matters could devolve into people using the downvote button to disagree. Just tanks those opinions to the bottom of threads and makes it so the hivemind opinion is biased to be above the fold and perpetuated among more parrots. Happens on HN too where I see slightly faded comments for no real reason get piled on a lot, although at least votes are masked here which discourages some of that behavior.

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asdff

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JKCalhoun  21 hours ago

A good point.

I handle the downvoted comments by 1) upvoting (but of course) but then also 2) adding a comment to the effect of "Hey, I upvoted you because ...".

We've all seen the downvoted comment start to "fade back in" by doing this.

Heck, I frequently even upvote greyed out comments I disagree with because I kind of root for the underdog anyway. Or, kind of as you say, think it is unfair (at least when the downvoted comment was sincere and not troll-bait or whatever).

Personally I try to avoid downvoting a comment if I am unwilling to leave a comment as to why. This open the doors to my getting downvotes as well if I am off base.

Regardless, watching my own comments get downvoted has been a good lesson for me. Sometimes I rethink my position ("Am I missing something here?") or, if nothing else, I rethink the tone I used ("Guess I need to make a better case next time — not come across so antagonistic.").

(Corny examples, but you get the idea.)