The idea of downvoting for not contributing to the discussion left HN a while ago. You are downvoted because you said something somebody doesn't agree with which is human nature: "our opinions differ, and I have the power to punish you for this, so you will be punished". Human nature, we suck as a species. They are just imaginary internet points. Don't worry about it.

And I thought disagreement was the worst reason for downvoting. I thought that you should downvote comments for low quality, when they add nothing but flame potential to the discussion.

Downvotes let a comment fade to grey until it is invisible. Is it so hard to see why someone would see this as punishment?

Why would I want to make counter-arguments vanish? A discussion where all visible comments promote the same opinion would be a boring, useless discussion. Actually, I tend to upvote opinions that I reject if they are outlined in a valuable manner. It is in my best interest to know the best points for all sides.

And OP, as I understand it, wants to make this more visible to downvoters: that disagreement isn't actually in the canonical list of downvote reasons.

We are here to learn & understand (perhaps painfully), not anonymously persecute.

Edit: I did not consciously realize the parent was "logicallee". ;)

When I don't like a replying comment, I have to ignore it or use my words.

[downvote] [comment about reason] [what? you missed the point] [no, you said this] [no, read it again] [you can't write] [you can't read] [your an idiot?] [you're a bigger idiot]

So many revered scientists have made comments that today would sound jackass silly. I doubt anyone here doesn’t have such comments under their belt.

Thinking or asking alone can never be wrong. As long as it’s well intentioned and open to the possibility of accepting counter arguments.

And furthermore, even talking about this topic is "meta discussion" which is discouraged here.

What does that say here? Disagreement is suppressed and self-reflection is not appreciated.

Let's just really think about that philosophy. It's an algorithm destined to echo chamber. A lack of diversity of thought.

People vote down what they disagree with, if they agreed with me, most peoples' biases would usually find my attitude appropriate.

If I said something like logically I feel a certain race is inferior genetically. People will vote that statement down purely out of disagreement and misinterpret it as an emotionally charged statement and illogical.

It's just a statement with no logic behind it. It's dead pan with nothing. You can't even find erroneous logic with it because the logic wasn't even spelled out. You can only technically disagree with the statement. But people will subconsciously add all sorts of embellishment.

That's how people work. Maybe Nimish didn't vote me down, but they certainly aren't voting me down because I'm crossing some sort of line. They're voting me down because they disagree. That's the majority of it.

You'll find that more than anything the majority of what I write are just dead pan responses with like 5% of the sentences being "expressive." In fact a great number of stuff that I write that gets voted down is just dead pan responses with zero "expressiveness."

It's because people can't tell the difference between someone disagreeing with them and an actual attack. That's human nature. We all think we're above it, but basically none of us are. You'll find that even you are like this.

The reason why I get voted down is because my opinions tend to be different than most people. So people interpret this disagreement as an attack.

I don't think it makes sense as a way of thinking about things. And I certainly won't stop commenting because some people find it disagreeable/distracting.

Some people aren't going to behave better just because you asked them to or explained why people downvoted their comment. Especially coming from a random internet stranger, this is usually experienced as an attack, not an attempt to be helpful.

And it's often not actually meant to be genuinely helpful. It often is fairly ugly behavior where someone feels like they can dictate to you how you are allowed to participate.

This means demographic outliers, minority views of any sort (in the sense of "a view not held by most people here") and anyone who has ever been picked on can be bullied, told to get in line and it's your fault you are being attacked.

That's not a path forward towards a better discussion forum.

As things stand currently, if you are willing to soak up the downvotes and you, yourself, follow the rules and are respectful, you can speak your mind and take a stand on unpopular positions, etc.

This is a forum that values rigorous scientific discussion. When social crap becomes more important than being able to state the truth as you understand it and have some hope of meaningful discussion, then HN is dead.

Hurt feelings about downvotes is social crap.

The culture supports the practice of corrective upvotes. That is sufficient to ameliorate most bad downvotes.

We don't need to actively encourage negative engagement, bullying and an attitude that you are required to get with the program and march to the same tune as everyone else lest a single downvotes lead to a pile on of ridiculous and pointless drama.

Some opinions are neither right nor wrong, they are just point of views, and the unpopular ones tend to get downvoted--admittedly, to a lesser extent on HN than other communities, but still happens. This has the unfortunate effect that, as you point out, the downvoted author doesn't know if there was something wrong with the tone or content, or if it just happened that his/her views are unpopular.

Maybe asking for a few words (presumably in a small, unintrusive ajax form, and not visible in the main thread) as reason for downvoting could be useful, and somewhat deter "not-my-opinion-at-all" downvotes.