>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

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

About the downvoting per se, it has a way of canceling out. This is one of the reasons the guidelines ask that voting on the comments not be discussed: just because you see a good comment greyed out, doesn't mean it will end up that way.

There's a faction of HN commenters who are somewhat reflexively anti-American, anti-capitalist, or both. In my experience they're also censorious by nature, and like to downvote and even flag comments which are perfectly polite, and simply express opinions they don't agree with. I consider the latter specifically to be very bad form, I vouch for comments which fit that profile almost daily now.

This has been exacerbated by the recent election, which has, understandably, upset people.

To be fair, though, pg has said in the distant past that it's fine to downvote to express disagreement.

I personally try not to do this too much (unless something is egregiously, probably wrong), but it's a thing that I think we should just accept as a norm.

> simply express opinions they don't agree with

Dang has said that downvoting for disagreement is allowed. Whether this is a good practice or not is probably a personal opinion. I don’t know how you would even correct for this if you wanted to. If someone is making normative statements especially, and you disagree, a downvote seems entirely appropriate?

I'm not sure how I could have phrased I consider the latter specifically to be very bad form any better? It's one thing to downvote a comment because you don't like it, flagging is quite another.

There's a difference between downvoting something substantively wrong, fatuous and/or cantankerous, bad faith, and so on, and simply doing so to punish the sort of person one doesn't like for speaking their mind. That difference is subjective, but I know it when I see it. There's no need to police this, or any way to really, but I think rather poorly of such behavior and would be gratified if they would knock it off.

I think it's really hard to draw that line, though. You "know" it when you see it, but others -- quite reasonably, sometimes -- know it and see it differently.

As an example, I'm fine downvoting an opinion that I find morally gross or anti-social, even though others (such as the person commenting) might think it's fine, and even agree with it.

How do you feel about the removal of the downvote numbers on YouTube? This debate about downvotes on HN seems like a similar scissor statement:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

I didn’t mention flagging, which I reserve for guidelines violations.