I think HN would be a more productive environment if downvoting required a responding comment to address the disagreement. In this case, I provide detailed personal experience with individuals that confirm the points I'm making, and it's downvoted. Certainly improper, unproductive, snarky, flame-ish comments are often downvoted, but all too often I see comments downvoted that are simply making reasonable points that someone finds convenient to ignore and downvoted rather than engage in meaningful discussion. I would implorer readers to always downvote and respond when they disagree, and only blindly downvote when the content is in some way counter to the community guidelines. And heck, even then a brief explanation would sometimes be useful to help the commenter understand where they went wrong.
