The absolute votes? No. In fact most of my higher vote comments are lower in substance (because people won't read long/nuanced posts, they want short black & white answers).
But it does irk me slightly when someone will -1 a comment without an explanation/response. I don't mind an active counter-view (heck, I may learn I was wrong!), it is the silent dismissal I cannot stand (and often seems knee-jerky when you criticize a sacred cow company/product).
But like all complaints like this, I am a giant hypocrite and have downvoted comments without responding.
Not the absolute votes exactly. I guess I mean more of an addiction to checking to see if people have replied. To see if you got an up or down vote - I also hate unexplained downvotes! I just want to know what their alt opinion was!
You have to check for replies aggressively or you can’t have a conversation, because the site doesn’t proactively notify you about responses.
Is there a service to get push notifications for HN responses?
> You have to check for replies aggressively or you can’t have a conversation
I've found the easiest way to do that is to click on your username on the front page, and then click on the comments link. Any replies to your comments will show up there. It's easier to check if you don't make a lot of new comments in different comment threads.
What would be nice is if sites like HN and Reddit would offer a preview pane of the overall comment thread structure with all comments collapsed and had a visual indicator about which subthread contains new comments since the last time you checked. Then it would be much easier to find newer comments and join the conversation.
That's part of the reason why threads on usenet would be active for months, but threads on Reddit and Hackernews aren't active for more than a few days.
The Hacker News Comments Owl browser plugin does something like this[0], I highly recommend it.