> or said something in an off-putting way

It shouldn't matter.

Currently, downvote means "I want this to be ranked lower". There really should be 2 options "factually incorrect" and "disagree". For people who think it should matter, there should be a third option, "rude", which others can ignore.

I've actually emailed about this with a mod and it seems he conflated talking about downvotes with having to explain a reason. He also told me (essentially) people should not have the right to defend themselves against incorrect moderator decisions and I honestly didn't know what to say to that, I'll probably message him again to confirm this is what he meant but I don't have high hopes after having similar interactions with mods on several different sites.

> FWIW, it never helps

The way I see it, it helped since I got 2 replies with more stuff to read about. Did you mean it doesn't work for you?

> downvotes as symmetric to upvotes

Yes, and we should have more upvote options too. I am not sure the explanation should be symmetric though.

Imagine a group conversation in which somebody lies (the "factually incorrect" case here). Depending on your social status within the group and group politics, you might call out the lie in public, in private with a subset or not at all. But if you do, you will almost certainly be expected to provide a reasoning or evidence.

Now imagine he says something which is factually correct. If you say you agree, are you expected to provide references why? I don't think so.

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BTW, on a site which is a more technical alternative to HN, there was recently a post about strange behavior of HN votes. Other people posted their experience with downvotes here and they mirrored mine - organic looking (i.e. gradual) upvotes, then within minutes of each other several downvotes. It could be coincidence but me and others suspect voting rings evading detection.

I also posted a link to my previous comment as an experiment - if people disagree, they are more likely to also downvote that one. But I did not see any change there so I suspect it might be bots (which are unlikely to be instructed to also click through and downvote there). Note sample size is 1 here, for now.