Since you got answered in downvotes I suspect the answer is "because people will switch languages on you"

I've recently seen many good and curious comments "answered in downvotes." Maybe I can't read the room, but why does that happen? Is there a way to phrase statements that challenge others in a way that leads to conversation and not flags/greying out?

> Is there a way to phrase statements that challenge others in a way that leads to conversation and not flags/greying out?

Of course there is! For example the way you have worded your question. It makes it clear what you diagre with and stimulates a conversation.

At the moment the greyed out comment simply says “why not?”. I would love to answer their question too, but it is not even clear what exactly it is about? And then further more are they disagreeing or are they requesting clarification on the root causes of some detail? If they are disagreeing on what grounds are they disagreeing?

I'm guilty of one worded replies that get downvoted. I do get annoyed since I'm basically poking the parent for an explanation.

But that's not a good way of doing it. A one-word reply rarely makes clear what needs more explanation, or even that that's what you're after.

On the other hand, a low-effort, drive-by unsupported claim doesn't necessarily deserve great effort and eloquence in a response. Maybe we should be better than them, but we also all have limited energy.

That's just it and I do need to make a choice, have a thoughtful reply or ignore the statement.

Some of us are kind of dense. I did not reply to the "Why not?" reply because I could not decide if it was intentionally a question about one of the things I said, or if it was a tongue-in-cheek example of someone who only uses three words or less.

Pretend I am dense, and give me a better idea of what I didn't explain well enough, and I'm happy to oblige. Everything I say makes sense in my head but I don't always communicate it effectively.

Did you reply to me saying why with why not or was that an example?

"Why not?", by itself, isn't a great reply to a two-paragraph comment that said more than one thing. It took me quite a while to realize that it was in reply to the "[n]either are people who won't say more than three words at a time". Given how long it took me to get it, I suspect that others may have missed it because it was too subtle. If you missed that (like I initially did), it's a lousy reply - either low effort or badly said.

I think that HN has more zealots, propagandists, shills, and others arguing in bad faith than it did ten years ago. And I think that many of us have grown less patient with posts that clearly seem to be grinding axes, pushing agendas, or arguing rather than listening. (I think dang would say that we shouldn't be like that, but my patience has limits. I admit that as a weakness in myself, but there it is.)

I thought person was making a kind of lame joke, demonstrating why people who don't say more than three words are no fun to talk to (and hence downvoted)

Did you reply to the wrong comment?

My prior comment doesn't seem downvoted.

Right now it does look like it attracted one or two downvotes. I did not reply to you because I didn't understand what you were asking. I thought maybe you were just being cheeky with a 'not more than three words at a time' response.

That's curious, the score must have been bouncing around a lot via a lot of upvotes and downvotes.

I was being partially cheeky with the answer, though it was also partially genuine, i.e. why are conversations with either loud mouths or silent types unappealing?

I couldn't say. [I'm no fun to talk to either.]