Something feels different about people’s reactions to an OP in comments IMO. It is not always a thing, but more of a broad pattern. How do you personally view this? Do you see it too? Do you have some clear picture in mind as to why this difference exists? I have a few ideas, but don’t want to taint your takes on the subject.
Well the OP is the one who made the Post so they obviously have more of an interest in the question/topic/image etc. Imagine someone posts a photo of their dog and a comment asks for what kind of dog it is for example. Then you would give a comment of the OP more credence than some person who knows neither the Dog nor OP and only has a single image to go off.
Same with your post here, if you answer to my comment “that’s not what I’m asking” I might be more inclined to amend my statement/make another comment than if any “random” that showed up to a thread saying “that’s not what OP was asking”.
Tl;dr: OP starts a post and might have the most interest/immediate knowledge of the subject matter. I wouldn’t say they “own” the post but they just have another relationship than a passerby commenter.
That’s not what OP is asking
To me, the pattern seems to be that OP comments tend to get less interaction overall, less voting, and less reply engagements. It is almost like there is an expectation that they are a host and not an actively welcomed participant in further conversations on more discussion based posts. I’m not talking about my own in isolation. It seems to be a general pattern with others too. Perhaps it is isolated to the content I am most interested in, but a pattern none the less.
I wonder if OP’s comments are often clarifications or even polite “thanks, I’ll try that!” kinda comments. Which are useful and appreciated, but aren’t adding a major new response and so less likely to be upvoted.
Also, people often up vote what they consider the “best” response to the question or issue of the post. And usually OP doesn’t provide the best response to their own post.
Less so in Lemmy than previous websites, but I still anecdotally find OP comments to get more traction.