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I really don't understand this community sometimes. If you are going to downvote a comment, why not explain why? Is there a perceived laziness? Or have I missed something???

At least let me know what is / isn't appropriate



> If you are going to downvote a comment, why not explain why?

"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That is largely interpreted as 'mostly refrain from talking about voting'. Keep in mind, downvoting here happens for many different reasons, it's not always negative and it is best not to take it personally or make assumptions about why it's happening. You could think of it as symmetric to upvoting & ask yourself whether you want an explanation for every upvote... maybe not? The goal is to have a high signal to noise ratio, and discussion of votes is mostly noise and almost always tangential to the article/thread.

I also didn't see the parent comment, but Terry & TempleOS have a long and complicated history here, so it might be a good idea to reserve judgement.


Soliciting help for a project to target Davis with unkindness is inappropriate, to put it mildly.

I can't argue with your observation regarding understanding the Hacker News community.




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