I know you are trying to be informative and nothing you said is wrong, but that opening sentence makes it sound like you are defending the practice of polygraphy which is pseudoscientific, inaccurate, and unethical. I have a feeling most downvoters never got past that first sentence.
I understand, but if I wrote comments with those types of people in mind, I’d never be able to say anything worthwhile.
The problem is the platform. There should be no option to downvote comments. It should just be upvote, reply, and report. Allowing people to downvote comments only leads to this sort of antisocial anti-intellectual behavior.
…if I wrote comments with those types of people in mind, I’d never be able to say anything worthwhile.
Pish-posh! Proofreading can help with that as can thinking about your audience. It’s certainly a skill that needs to be developed, but you have plenty of interesting points to make and only have to tweak the presentation. For example, you could preface your post with a statement of intent.
“Look, I’m not defending the practice but…” would do.
For example, I was raised evangelical and am now a deconstructed atheist. I still interject regularly on scriptural topics that people frequently get wrong, which can result in others assuming I am an advocate. I am not, so I try to preface those kinds of statements with qualifiers.
This is a lot of effort simply to avoid comment downvotes, and I did in fact hedge my comment in the first four words.
This is going to sound tautological, but comment downvotes against my comments only express the opinions of the type of person who would downvote my comments. It’s like that quote about not playing chess against a pigeon. If anything, I want them to respond to my comment so that I know who they are. I’d argue that if the platform allows comment downvotes, and this goes only for comment downvotes, not for upvotes, or post votes, but if the platform allows comment downvotes, then it should also allow any user to see who downvoted the comment. If my hedge in the first four words of my comment isn’t enough to convince people to have enough curiosity to read past the first sentence, then the truth is that I don’t think they’re worth my time. If they’re the type of people who downvote my comment, then I don’t really want anything to do with them. It’s simply evidence of bad behavior.
I know you are trying to be informative and nothing you said is wrong, but that opening sentence makes it sound like you are defending the practice of polygraphy which is pseudoscientific, inaccurate, and unethical. I have a feeling most downvoters never got past that first sentence.
I understand, but if I wrote comments with those types of people in mind, I’d never be able to say anything worthwhile.
The problem is the platform. There should be no option to downvote comments. It should just be upvote, reply, and report. Allowing people to downvote comments only leads to this sort of antisocial anti-intellectual behavior.
Pish-posh! Proofreading can help with that as can thinking about your audience. It’s certainly a skill that needs to be developed, but you have plenty of interesting points to make and only have to tweak the presentation. For example, you could preface your post with a statement of intent.
“Look, I’m not defending the practice but…” would do.
For example, I was raised evangelical and am now a deconstructed atheist. I still interject regularly on scriptural topics that people frequently get wrong, which can result in others assuming I am an advocate. I am not, so I try to preface those kinds of statements with qualifiers.
This is a lot of effort simply to avoid comment downvotes, and I did in fact hedge my comment in the first four words.
This is going to sound tautological, but comment downvotes against my comments only express the opinions of the type of person who would downvote my comments. It’s like that quote about not playing chess against a pigeon. If anything, I want them to respond to my comment so that I know who they are. I’d argue that if the platform allows comment downvotes, and this goes only for comment downvotes, not for upvotes, or post votes, but if the platform allows comment downvotes, then it should also allow any user to see who downvoted the comment. If my hedge in the first four words of my comment isn’t enough to convince people to have enough curiosity to read past the first sentence, then the truth is that I don’t think they’re worth my time. If they’re the type of people who downvote my comment, then I don’t really want anything to do with them. It’s simply evidence of bad behavior.