Regarding why you got the downvotes, I have a guess: "Have you (maybe) considered not ..." usually gets followed by something that's transparently stupid or incompetent or otherwise undesirable in the given context. For example: "Have you considered NOT publicly yelling at your coworkers?" Obviously that's not what you were saying, but it may have read like it.
It's a fantastic INDIRECT way of telling someone they did something stupid. And because stupid actions map so well onto their doers, it's also a fantastic way to insult people.
As an aside: this sort of indirection - asking a question to assert something - it's not peculiar to English, but it's suuper common in English-language expressions (which is, in fact, due to the habitual indirection of the English - at least according to a linguistics professor I once had.)
The kicker is: because it's an ironic construction, it’s likely going to require more effort to process: the presence of irony means that what is actually meant by the speaker is not encoded literally, but rather must be interpreted - derived from what WAS said - and irony (and other ways of flouting literal language) yields a disjunction (x || y || z). It puts the listener into a role where their recognition of intent and ability to joke around are tested - and the correct interpretation is up in the air. So while it's possible to say this expression to a friend when they screw up ("Have you considered NOT showing up to work drunk?"), it's also a great way to make an enemy ("Have you considered NOT being a fuckup that nobody likes?"). Same construction. (In fact, this later example is especially sinister, because any answer you give just makes YOU assert what you're being slandered with. "No" - I haven't considered not being a fuckup? / "Yes" - I did in fact consider not being a fuckup? You get the idea. It can be wielded in a very mean way.)
And your comment wasn't intended this way at all, and in fact it's obvious when you read it that straight talk and no irony is meant, but it shares enough of the signification with the ironic phrase that it sets off alarm bells. Especially in an online reply to someone, where trolling is sport! The context is working against you here.
And the context is the first tool we have when interpreting communication, because it's already available to our cognition before we receive any given message. And brains are energy misers, using heuristics to filter shit out that doesn't look like a good reward for the necessary energy expenditure.
So I bet that the downvoters saw 1) a short comment, and short is by the way much more likely to be low effort and unconstructive; and 2) all the native speakers' downvoting brains instantly recognized the same construction as the ironic idiom talked about above, and then they instantly said fuck it, this person is being a dick, without even really reading it. Since irony (unless it’s expected) requires more processing effort (both in detecting WHETHER irony is present AND what the ironic speaker means, just to get to the point where you can start assessing the semantic content), these two things were enough to justify jumping the interpretive gun. I wouldn't be surprised if your question was flagged by MOST native speakers’ brains’ asshole detection systems. And so, the actual substance of your question, which, processed in its entirety, have indicated that you were asking a bona fide, relevant, even microservices-essential question - got booted out. And then the overzealous downvoters succumbed to the urge to smash the downvote button without a second thought and never looked back.
I found myself in the same place, actually - thinking "they're being a dick," then moving on. Probably took less than a second. Often when people in online conversations say why the downvotes? they're trolls acting in bad faith, which pisses me off because I always go reread what they wrote. So I did. You weren't calling anyone stupid! Still, I had to stare at it a bit before I realized it was an unintentional collision with the syntax of sarcasm. Maybe like if I wrote "Was hast du denn?" and really truly meant "what do you have?" instead of "what's wrong with you?" If you don't recognize it for what it is, it might look like an honest question which expects an honest answer.
Oh. Another thing to consider: after a while spent in any given semiotic context, our cognition adjusts and those cognitive heuristics that reject hard things become even lazier. Our pattern of behavior when reading on screens starts with reading, but then it turns to skimming and scanning if given long enough. I'd bet money that if your brief, but bona fide contribution had been one of the first comments, your downvote percentage would be a LOT lower. Halfway down a long page, the skippers are skipping and the downvoters downvoting. That doesn't mean that they intended to or are even aware of the switch in reading modes. At the top of the page, information is still shiny and new, and worth interpreting, speculating on the speaker and their intentions, etc. After a while, nobody gives any comment a second chance.
Anyway, I don't get to revisit all the shit I learned at university enough, so it felt good to write all that. Are you still here? Maybe everyone's already moved the fuck on. Brain got bored? Would serve me right, ha! So, here I go, back to my job, where instead of working in cognitive linguistics, text semiotics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, etc., I'm writing boring-ass JavaScript all day, for an application ... being built on microservices.
It's a fantastic INDIRECT way of telling someone they did something stupid. And because stupid actions map so well onto their doers, it's also a fantastic way to insult people.
As an aside: this sort of indirection - asking a question to assert something - it's not peculiar to English, but it's suuper common in English-language expressions (which is, in fact, due to the habitual indirection of the English - at least according to a linguistics professor I once had.)
The kicker is: because it's an ironic construction, it’s likely going to require more effort to process: the presence of irony means that what is actually meant by the speaker is not encoded literally, but rather must be interpreted - derived from what WAS said - and irony (and other ways of flouting literal language) yields a disjunction (x || y || z). It puts the listener into a role where their recognition of intent and ability to joke around are tested - and the correct interpretation is up in the air. So while it's possible to say this expression to a friend when they screw up ("Have you considered NOT showing up to work drunk?"), it's also a great way to make an enemy ("Have you considered NOT being a fuckup that nobody likes?"). Same construction. (In fact, this later example is especially sinister, because any answer you give just makes YOU assert what you're being slandered with. "No" - I haven't considered not being a fuckup? / "Yes" - I did in fact consider not being a fuckup? You get the idea. It can be wielded in a very mean way.)
And your comment wasn't intended this way at all, and in fact it's obvious when you read it that straight talk and no irony is meant, but it shares enough of the signification with the ironic phrase that it sets off alarm bells. Especially in an online reply to someone, where trolling is sport! The context is working against you here.
And the context is the first tool we have when interpreting communication, because it's already available to our cognition before we receive any given message. And brains are energy misers, using heuristics to filter shit out that doesn't look like a good reward for the necessary energy expenditure.
So I bet that the downvoters saw 1) a short comment, and short is by the way much more likely to be low effort and unconstructive; and 2) all the native speakers' downvoting brains instantly recognized the same construction as the ironic idiom talked about above, and then they instantly said fuck it, this person is being a dick, without even really reading it. Since irony (unless it’s expected) requires more processing effort (both in detecting WHETHER irony is present AND what the ironic speaker means, just to get to the point where you can start assessing the semantic content), these two things were enough to justify jumping the interpretive gun. I wouldn't be surprised if your question was flagged by MOST native speakers’ brains’ asshole detection systems. And so, the actual substance of your question, which, processed in its entirety, have indicated that you were asking a bona fide, relevant, even microservices-essential question - got booted out. And then the overzealous downvoters succumbed to the urge to smash the downvote button without a second thought and never looked back.
I found myself in the same place, actually - thinking "they're being a dick," then moving on. Probably took less than a second. Often when people in online conversations say why the downvotes? they're trolls acting in bad faith, which pisses me off because I always go reread what they wrote. So I did. You weren't calling anyone stupid! Still, I had to stare at it a bit before I realized it was an unintentional collision with the syntax of sarcasm. Maybe like if I wrote "Was hast du denn?" and really truly meant "what do you have?" instead of "what's wrong with you?" If you don't recognize it for what it is, it might look like an honest question which expects an honest answer.
Oh. Another thing to consider: after a while spent in any given semiotic context, our cognition adjusts and those cognitive heuristics that reject hard things become even lazier. Our pattern of behavior when reading on screens starts with reading, but then it turns to skimming and scanning if given long enough. I'd bet money that if your brief, but bona fide contribution had been one of the first comments, your downvote percentage would be a LOT lower. Halfway down a long page, the skippers are skipping and the downvoters downvoting. That doesn't mean that they intended to or are even aware of the switch in reading modes. At the top of the page, information is still shiny and new, and worth interpreting, speculating on the speaker and their intentions, etc. After a while, nobody gives any comment a second chance.
Anyway, I don't get to revisit all the shit I learned at university enough, so it felt good to write all that. Are you still here? Maybe everyone's already moved the fuck on. Brain got bored? Would serve me right, ha! So, here I go, back to my job, where instead of working in cognitive linguistics, text semiotics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, etc., I'm writing boring-ass JavaScript all day, for an application ... being built on microservices.