I’m very curious about the reasoning different people use when deciding to downvote a post or comment. Often, when something gets “heavily” downvoted, the OP will ask some variation of “why the downvotes?”. This is sometimes answered with sincere criticism, but sometimes is received even more poorly than the original offending post.
Do you downvote people who ask “why the downvotes?”? What informs the decision?
Completely depends on the comment itself. If its someone just being a cunt and then asking “why the downvotes?! We don’t have freedom of speech?!” or something moronic like that, I downvote and then block them.
But if its someone that I think were misunderstood, brigaded, or perhaps just piled on, like used to happen in reddit, I ask them to clarify what they meant. Or if I think they were brigaded or piled on, I explain to them that it sometimes happens and not to care about it too much.
Defending a comment on the basis of free speech is the last bastion of the intellectually bankrupt. If your best defense could just as easily be used to justify saying a string of random words, then what you’re saying carries exactly the same weight as nonsense. I would downvote that.