Re:I Downvoted Because
by undecisive on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @11:12AM
(#25763940)
Absolutely. Usually there's no problem in doing both (hence, I guess, the OP)
But commenting without downvoting skews the ordering algorithms, and of course if someone else has already made a similar enough comment that you wouldn't be adding materially to the conversation, adding a similar comment just makes the post look busy an therefore, potentially, interesting.
In my other comment here, I suggested a solution to the duplication problem - you can downvote only if you either create a reply or upvote an existing reply (as a sign of agreement).
Re:I Downvoted Because
by undecisive on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @11:35AM
(#25764319)
That would be a nice feature. Or much like a "report" button on some platforms, if clicking downvote meant you had to say why you had disliked, and it gives you the usual moderation options, all the other comments that it could auto-upvote, or a free-text field that automatically creates a comment... that would probably be the least-friction way of dealing with it.
Re:I Downvoted Because
by FalconSensei on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @01:36PM
(#25766165)
That would be great! I agree with parent comments that sometimes downvoting without commenting serves no purpose.
You got a downvoted comment with no replies. Now, why was it downvoted? You can reread it and see if you were rude/offensive, but besides that...
I don't think anybody reading an Internet discussion has so little time not to add to the downvote: "This part of your comment is horribly wrong, I warn others against doing it."
Actually, I think I would be more convinced to be careful with that sentence than just seeing bunch of downvotes.