Within the past day I posted a question regarding a personal experience of mine that I genuinely wanted advice on.
Although I don’t mind getting tons of upvotes on questions, as an experienced Stack Exchange member who has been active on the site since 2013, I realize that reputation is not a big deal.
That said, sometimes if I get downvoted and I would like to know why. I am very aware that asking for a downvote explanation might lead to even more downvotes, but to me I genuinely want to know if the question itself was a turn-off for someone or was there something I could have done to the wording, length or structure to improve things. Or perhaps, some other reason entirely.
So knowing that I posted a simple comment asking the downvoter to explain themselves… And this was fairly quickly removed. Then I posted the request again stating, my original request for an explanation was removed so I am posting it again. Then that was removed as well.
Extremely frustrated since this all happened within the span of a few hours, I have now posted the following comment; screenshot added below for reference as well:
This is now the 3rd time I am reposting this request: Can the down voter please explain the down vote if at all possible. To the mod who has been deleting these comments, depending on my workload today I might start a meta discussion as to why you are doing this and how this is counter to Stack Exchange policies. I am fully within my right to request a down vote explanation especially since I really wish to know if this is the question itself or some aspect of how it was asked. Thank you.
So I guess my blatantly calling out moderators for deleting the comment worked! The comment still stands!
But I am quite unhappy with moderator behavior here. Why the heck did that happen?
These comments were what they were; simple request for downvote explanation that vanished almost as quickly as they were posted. Is there some cultural aspect of this Stack Exchange site that I am missing?
And while I understand some sites and moderators like to clean up comments on a regular basis, my main frustration is these comments were deleted in less than 24 hours after posting. Which seems unnecessarily (excuse the term) anal. I would like to think like a comment to request explanation for downvoting can stand for at least 24 to 48 hours before it becomes a truly stale and fruitless effort. So in total, I think the “strictness” of comment moderation here is self-defeating. The speed of removal seems to imply a desire to have utterly no comments on the site which seems ridiculous.