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A comment on Dear YC: Please stop downvoting thoughtful comments you disagree with.. Parent comment

Re:Dear YC: Please stop downvoting thoughtful comments you d... by swoodtke on Friday July 24, 2009 @09:17AM (#721356)
To continue with your analogy, I would assume most people would be very irritated with a compiler which only reported that you made an error but didn't give you any context into where the error occurred.

Most compilers make a large effort to give you good error messages with file names and line numbers so you can correct your mistake.

Downvoting is like reporting an error with no context: not very useful in determining what is wrong with the comment.

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Re:Dear YC: Please stop downvoting thoughtful comments you d... by Confusion on Friday July 24, 2009 @10:38AM (#721490)
Too many people in these discussions treat the issue as a false dichotomy. They fail to take two things into account:

1) Downvoting and responding aren't mutually exclusive.

2) Downvoting and the presence of comment that already states the exact reason for the downvote aren't mutually exclusive. You downvote one post and upvote the comment that explains the downvote.

You really wouldn't want everyone that downvotes a post to repeat the same reason over and over again.

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