It’s curious that LWers are polite when they comment, but pretty brutal with the anonymous downvotes.
I think people are just setting too low a threshold for downvotes. That does tempt me to save posts from negative scores just to encourage the authors not to give up. I think people are giving downvotes whenever they didn’t personally benefit from a post, and they should often be giving no vote instead.
I think the official guidance for upvoted and downvotes. is “I want more like this” and “I want less like this”. I reserve downvotes for posts that are so bad that they risk making us less correct and effective. Bad writing with no ideas, evidence, or virwpoints that are new to me specifically just gets no vote either way.
It’s curious that LWers are polite when they comment, but pretty brutal with the anonymous downvotes.
I think people are just setting too low a threshold for downvotes. That does tempt me to save posts from negative scores just to encourage the authors not to give up. I think people are giving downvotes whenever they didn’t personally benefit from a post, and they should often be giving no vote instead.
I think the official guidance for upvoted and downvotes. is “I want more like this” and “I want less like this”. I reserve downvotes for posts that are so bad that they risk making us less correct and effective. Bad writing with no ideas, evidence, or virwpoints that are new to me specifically just gets no vote either way.