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komponisto comments on On Comments, Voting, and Karma - Part I - Less Wrong
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I completely agree with you on the question of self-upvotes.
In fact, there's yet another option: do away with the automatic self-upvote, so that users may actively vote on their own comments just like anyone else's (with the same impact on karma). This doesn't sound like a major change, but who knows -- the results may be surprising.
On the question of explanations, I'm less sure (cf. my reply to Yvain's comment that you quoted). If I put a lot of thought into a comment, and it gets downvoted, I'm going to be perplexed enough to want an explanation. In particular, I won't appreciate an implicit suggestion that I didn't put a lot of thought into the comment.
The problem with being able to self-upvote but not have it be automatic is that the people who have the lowest standards would vote their own comments up the most. This would effectively handicap people who hold themselves to higher standards.
I think for this reason that it should either be automatic or not exist at all.
Ah, but many of the comments made here clearly aren't intended to be profoundly important or even particularly useful.
It would be useful for people to be able to make inconsequential posts and then not vote them up. Similarly for the ability to emphasize particularly important points.
If instead we make it impossible to vote our own comments and posts either up or down, then the automatic upvote should absolutely be removed.
If I thought my own comment was downvote-worthy, I probably wouldn't have posted it
When downvoted you can hope for an explanation, and you can hate it when people don't give one, but forcing one?
I've offered three bright-line tests for when you can feel entitled to an explanation of what is wrong with your comment.
Notice how your use of the word comment, as though all comments and explanations are equal, strips out the quantitative aspect. I don't think that you can expect people to put more effort into explaining a down vote than the writer of the original comment put into writing it. If you spend five minutes writing a comment that contributes a tangle of confusions to the discussion you are not entitled to have a down-voter spend half an hour on a comment that untangles it all for you.
One the other hand, if you spend some extra time on your post, distinguishing subtle nuances of words, and tagging them, eg free1=gratis, free2=libre, and then make your your point with the tagged words, eg the GNU GPL focuses on free2 and free1 is collateral damage, then you have born much of the burden of untangling the ordinary, boring confusions. It is much less labour for a respondent to explain why he disagrees with you, and he should say.
Right, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should upvote it. Comments like the one above, while they add to the discussion, are not on par with comments that also make good, clear arguments, cite sources, and link to relevant resources.
ETA: Yes, I do realize the tension between this and the notion that I wouldn't post something if I didn't think it was upvote-worthy. If everybody agrees with me on this stuff I'm going to have to go back and un-upvote a lot of my own comments.