Suggest HN: Force downvoters to punch in why

If you're going to bestow the gray text of shame, you should have to provide an explanation why such that noobs, such as myself, can better understand HN zeitgeist. If it's due to ideology, such as: Functional programming is literally the second coming of Jesus Christ. Elon Musk is a hero, why are you not already in line to offer him sexual favors? It doesn't follow the HN terms or was simply puerile or poorly written.

I'm glad downvoting was removed for new users because it is usually just used to indicate that you disagree with a point of view, though the HN elites seem just as fallible if not more fallible in this regard.

Tech folks always say communicating with huge corporations is similar to communicating with a psychopath, but communicating online in general has this feeling. You're not talking to anyone it's like talking to a brick wall that will give you a pat or a prod after you give it a couple hours. I think I might just not be up for online mob communication like this and will just go back to lurking. I do have the desire to contribute, but it doesn't really feel worth it a lot of the time.

There was a time when Youtube view and subscriber count was similar. Now there is a cadre of Youtube professionals whos careers live and die by these numbers.

Also, neither I nor anyone else cares about the points, I don't expect to spend them at the karma store. What I do care about, as I'm sure you do as well, is whether something I said is incorrect and why.

At some point, I started treating downvotes as feedback on my writing. So I would take another look at what I wrote. Maybe I did not make my point clearly. Maybe what I said was wrong. Maybe it just wasn't worth saying. Maybe I was an asshat. Then I would edit it or delete it or leave it alone...and I've consciously left asshat comments alone because sometimes my intent was to be an asshat.

All of that still applies, though I am more likely to delete something I wrote these days and hopefully less likely to be an asshat because I try to avoid being one.

Anyway, sometimes I downvote in disagreement. It is often a better alternative to writing the nonconstructive thing I'd otherwise be inclined to write because what I'm inclined to write is the sort of comment I don't want to read on Hacker News. It's not the sort of comment I usually want to write either.

That sort of comment I don't want to read includes the sort of comment that provides a lot of entertainment elsewhere on the internet...we've all seen it: clever insulting outrage [feigned and real] written to win.

Anyway:

1. the guidelines suggest not commenting about being downvoted.

2. Questions about the site can be directed to the moderators via the contact link.

3. Good luck.

I agree, that a lot of downvotes are caused by tone, writing style, or clarity. However there's also a lot of downvotes caused simply by being against the consensus. And while I feel like sometimes people are against the group-think just for the sake of it (or to ruffle feathers) there are also times when a healthy dose of alternative viewpoints can dampen the group-think getting too extreme.

For example, just yesterday there was a thread talking about the US turning root DNS over to the UN. This thread turned into a jingoistic nightmare talking about how awesome America is, how they're the only true bastion of freedom, and how the rest of the world is a savage freedom hating backwater. That thread desperately needed more counter-balance, but no doubt people like myself were concerned that the groupthink became so focused that counter-balance would have been met with swift and numerous down downvotes (and risk site privileges because of being downvoted too heavily).

This isn't a complaint about downvotes, this is pointing out that downvotes change posting behaviour both for good (i.e. stopping people being jerks) and for bad (i.e. stopping opinion counter to the "group think").