It takes a long time to craft a response to posts like these. Even if there are clear problems with the post, given the sensitive topic you have to spend a lot of time on nuance, checking citations, and getting the tone right. That is a very high bar, one that I don’t think is reasonable to expect everyone to pass. In contrast, people who agree seem to get a pass for silently upvoting.
That’s a reasonable objection. I wouldn’t mind seeing even a non-nuanced response (e.g. “I think this post undervalues the utility of X compared to Y”) rather than no response, but many other readers don’t share my preferences and might take issue with that kind of comment (especially for this topic). And of course, mobile users are especially disadvantaged when it comes to comment-writing.
Still, if someone is a downvoter and wants to do something helpful for others in the same situation, creating one critical response that can then be upvoted (showing the relative popularity of objection X vs. objections Y, Z, etc.) seems unusually valuable.
It takes a long time to craft a response to posts like these. Even if there are clear problems with the post, given the sensitive topic you have to spend a lot of time on nuance, checking citations, and getting the tone right. That is a very high bar, one that I don’t think is reasonable to expect everyone to pass. In contrast, people who agree seem to get a pass for silently upvoting.
That’s a reasonable objection. I wouldn’t mind seeing even a non-nuanced response (e.g. “I think this post undervalues the utility of X compared to Y”) rather than no response, but many other readers don’t share my preferences and might take issue with that kind of comment (especially for this topic). And of course, mobile users are especially disadvantaged when it comes to comment-writing.
Still, if someone is a downvoter and wants to do something helpful for others in the same situation, creating one critical response that can then be upvoted (showing the relative popularity of objection X vs. objections Y, Z, etc.) seems unusually valuable.