
Ask HN: Does asking “Why am I being downvoted” get upvotes? - chippy
In Hacker News (and reddit) when a comment is edited that says something like &quot;Why am I being downvoted?&quot; or &quot;I don&#x27;t usually say this, but why the downvotes?&quot; do people then tend to upvote these more than if they had not been edited?<p>As an aside, I think there may be two reasons why people edit the post but which are hard to determine externally:<p>1) &quot;I don&#x27;t understand why this is being downvoted&quot; they may be saying &quot;I DO understand why this is being downvoted but I think I should have support&quot;. It&#x27;s an appeal for justice, an equalling out.<p>2) &quot;I don&#x27;t understand why this is being downvoted&quot; and they actually don&#x27;t understand why. They are either asking for information to help them understand, or they are admitting they are blinkered in their views and cannot understand why there is opposition. By editing the comment they are appealing for others to back them up.<p>Another reason could be that they are new users and are unfamiliar with how the platform works, how karma and voting works etc. By asking &quot;why the downvotes&quot; they are saying they do not understand how voting works. Possibly they are comparing the mechanic with Facebook &quot;likes&quot;.<p>Regardless of the reasons for editing a comment such, I think it is a beneficial activity as I believe that by doing so it encourages others to upvote. Is it actually true though? Have you edited your comment in such a way, why? Did it work for you?
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mtmail
From the HN guidelines "Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It
never does any good, and it makes boring reading.". And I agree, it usually
takes any discussion further away from the topic. Rarely do I see "why am I
being downvoted?" as an appeal for justice or appeal for others to back up an
opinion.

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minimaxir
More often I see comments _downvoted further_ after asking why they are being
downvoted, as it is against HN guidelines.

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inputcoffee
It is against guidelines? I don't recall seeing that in the guidelines.

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mtmail
The last two items on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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inputcoffee
Oh yeah. I interpreted commenting as complaining or defending oneself. I have
seen many people ask why they got down-voted and, invariably, I see at least
one polite explanation. (I've been paying attention because about a third of
the time, I wonder myself why someone else got down-voted).

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dzolvd
Related post: Does asking Ask HN 'Does asking “Why am I being downvoted” get
upvotes?' get answers?

