Reddit style, low value add comments tend to get downvoted on HN.

I mean like I said, I don't really give a shit about being down voted, it's not about to get me hell banned or anything but: cbanek, js2, fjsolwmv and pravula might care that i am glad to be informed and my original comment was actually a question and not just me being a dick.

It's not low value. You get a good gauge of others' sentiment with that kind of comment triplet. That social information is worth more than the value of the person who learned the information silently upvoting the evidentiary response, with no follow-up comment left behind.

There's got to be some kind of Muphry's Law about talking about downvotes, and I ought to know better by this point.