Well, since you've staked out your reply in direct and total point-by-point opposition to my own, bizarro-world style, there isn't much room for discussion. I will address one thing:
> It is not generally the practice to comment to explain downvotes, and, IMO -- especially given the absence of collapsed threads on HN, but even if it were present -- it would defeat the point of downvoting and decrease the signal-to-noise ratio to do so, as then meta-discussion of the problem with posts would take more real estate, at the expense of the worthwhile discussion of the topic at hand.
I am not suggesting that every single downvote warrants an explanation. I thought that was obvious. But if you look at the two extremes:
* No downvote is ever expanded on in a comment by the downvoter. The site rules themselves will explain some of the downvotes. However, alone they do a poor job of encapsulating what this community considers productive and unproductive discussion. We usually don't know why downvotes are happening. Nothing improves unless mods take direct action to make it happen, as this community has no mechanism for self-regulation.
* Every downvote is explained. I gather you believe this is the worse of the two extremes and I agree. The forum disappears up its own asshole in endless boring meta-discussion and everyone leaves.
Downvotes should be explained sometimes. My one-in-ten figure from before was a total guess. I haven't harvested any data and I don't have any spreadsheets, but I too often see greyed-out posts that I can't for the life of me figure out why they were downvoted. As in, even if I approach it with an unusually high degree of cynicism I still can't guess at a reason. It's gotten to the point that if I see a grey post I'll just automatically upvote it even if I don't read it. I encourage others to do the same.
I disagree, explanation is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of downvoting. I suppose it would make sense if the explanations were hidden and only made visible to the poster whose comment was downvoted, or by activelt interacting with the downvoted post. Otherwise, its polluting discussion of the topic with meta-discussion, compounding further the problem posed by posts that are downvoted.
> It is not generally the practice to comment to explain downvotes, and, IMO -- especially given the absence of collapsed threads on HN, but even if it were present -- it would defeat the point of downvoting and decrease the signal-to-noise ratio to do so, as then meta-discussion of the problem with posts would take more real estate, at the expense of the worthwhile discussion of the topic at hand.
I am not suggesting that every single downvote warrants an explanation. I thought that was obvious. But if you look at the two extremes:
* No downvote is ever expanded on in a comment by the downvoter. The site rules themselves will explain some of the downvotes. However, alone they do a poor job of encapsulating what this community considers productive and unproductive discussion. We usually don't know why downvotes are happening. Nothing improves unless mods take direct action to make it happen, as this community has no mechanism for self-regulation.
* Every downvote is explained. I gather you believe this is the worse of the two extremes and I agree. The forum disappears up its own asshole in endless boring meta-discussion and everyone leaves.
Downvotes should be explained sometimes. My one-in-ten figure from before was a total guess. I haven't harvested any data and I don't have any spreadsheets, but I too often see greyed-out posts that I can't for the life of me figure out why they were downvoted. As in, even if I approach it with an unusually high degree of cynicism I still can't guess at a reason. It's gotten to the point that if I see a grey post I'll just automatically upvote it even if I don't read it. I encourage others to do the same.