Error comments on A few remarks about mass-downvoting - Less Wrong

17 Post author: gjm 13 February 2014 05:06PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (87)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Error 14 February 2014 06:49:00PM *  9 points [-]

In this community it might be more accurate to say that people do not like useless negative feedback. I'm perfectly happy to get useful negative feedback, and I think most who participate here would agree.

[ETA: A heavily downvoted post is useful information; it says people don't like what you posted, and this is something you can analyze, ignore, or change appropriately. Mass-downvoting is discouraging without providing anything useful; it says someone doesn't like what you posted because you're you, and that's kind of hard to change.

My personal opinion is that mass-downvoting is basically trolling and that complaining about it is counterproductive for the same reason that responding to trolls is counterproductive.]