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I propose the following:

  1. The block quoted text in the question Can someone help Scott Manley explain this capture maneuver? is inarticulate and pretty much meaningless in terms of explaining principles of orbital mechanics.
  2. my answer there is articulate, a correct statement of fact, and a good explanation of what is happening in the video, and clarifies what was poorly explained in the video.
  3. The answer is therefore a good answer to the question
  4. The five anonymous down votes, without a single helpful comment are therefore unusual.

Am I missing something here, or do these down votes seem out of place for this site? Could people be down voting because they weren't able to close my question as duplicate?

I'm not worried about the votes themselves, but I am worried that a good answer is fading, with -3 net votes it is starting to display with reduced visibility. I feel that a good answer should not be rendered in such a way, and that this might be happening due to some choreography of voting., so I'm interested in hearing other views on the nature and quality of the answer itself:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ I'm continuing this here, as suggested, rather than adding more comments to the answer: I'm a relative newbie to Space Exploration, but very familiar with SE. You seem distressed by the downvotes to your answer. You mention extenuating circumstances regarding close votes on a related answer, but most people seeing the question have no visibility into it, so I hope you keep that in mind. I do want to point out to you that you've jumped to a conspiracy theory as an explanation. That doesn't mean it's not true, but you've provided no evidence either. $\endgroup$ – Avi Cherry Jun 7 '19 at 23:41
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    $\begingroup$ I'm a "fan" of Scott Manley and being familiar with him, I don't expect everything his says to be "rigorously" answered both because of his layperson audience and that it's obvious that not all of his posts are thoroughly planned and rehearsed. Because of this I (as a "fan") don't take your question as any sort of attack on him, but as a request for clarification on what was obviously not a rigorous statement of his. When I watched the video I just assumed "something to do with the Oberth effect" but I didn't dig deeper because my orbital mechanics and maths aren't up to the task. $\endgroup$ – Avi Cherry Jun 7 '19 at 23:49
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    $\begingroup$ In conclusion: 1 – not everyone seeing the question has seen all the intermediate steps that you have so I hope you consider that from other people's perspective the result might come across as self-focused. 2 – I'm a "fan" of SM and I don't think your question or answer casts him in a negative light and therefore don't see why even an "unreasonable" fan of his would vote you down for that reason. $\endgroup$ – Avi Cherry Jun 7 '19 at 23:56
  • $\begingroup$ @AviCherry Thanks for your thoughts and perspective. As you are addressing aspects of my question directly, why not consider copy/pasting these into an answer post? $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 8 '19 at 0:48
  • $\begingroup$ I would, but I think this falls under "extended conversation" and you've already linked to this meta from your comment on your answer. $\endgroup$ – Avi Cherry Jun 8 '19 at 4:57
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I totally sympathize with you; I had a similar experience in the past week. Like your post, I self-answered my own question, and got a lot of downvotes for it.

It seems that some people are downvoting because they don't like self-answers, even if the answer is useful and accurate. That's not what downvotes should be used for.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for your answer but I don't think self-answering is it, or at least the complete answer. It turns out that I am one of the downvoters of your question there, but my stated reason is that the way your question is written it seems you already know the answer, which makes people persnickety. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 8 '19 at 3:37
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    $\begingroup$ @uhoh: Well, I did as you suggested, edited the question, and wrote an answer. Perhaps reconsider your vote? $\endgroup$ – DrSheldon Jun 8 '19 at 3:40
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    $\begingroup$ (I see you have, vote reversed) But I've never seen a case where one posts an answer to one's own question days later after further reading and thinking where anyone complains at all. Answering one's own question is in fact frequently encouraged. Even when people post a question to which they know the answer and then immediately post the answer, that's usually well-received as long as the quality of the answer is good. Here I've got five silent, anonymous down votes on what I think is a good quality and correct answer to a reasonable question. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 8 '19 at 3:40
  • $\begingroup$ All I can offer is sympathy. It makes no sense to me. $\endgroup$ – DrSheldon Jun 8 '19 at 3:48
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As you state, there's absolutely nothing wrong with answering your own question. So if people are downvoting your answer solely for that reason, that's wrong.

I don't watch Youtube videos so your question and answer mean nothing to me - I am not qualified to vote on either - but in general it can come across a bit condescending to explain what "someone is trying to say". Perhaps this Manley fellow's fans don't like it, don't think he needs help, and are downvoting for that reason. It would be nice if they commented to that effect, but perhaps they feel it would make what they are doing seem petty.

And yes, as a persnickety person, it can annoy me when people post questions they obviously know the answer to, and don't answer them. But if it annoys me to the extent that I downvote, I would comment.

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for your thorough feedback! I didn't know the answer at the time that I'd posted the question. The first two sentences explain the source of my confusion; I'd thought it was a three-body scenario, but one kind of "capture" had nothing to do with the other kind of "capture", so I was happy to figure out what was going on two days later and wrote up a concise explanation. Oh well, it's coming up on zero votes now, and is no longer displayed as "faded out", yay! $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 11 '19 at 3:01
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    $\begingroup$ Since you want more Shuttle questions, I will try to oblige. $\endgroup$ – DrSheldon Jun 12 '19 at 16:25
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I was one of the downvoters, but the downvote was for an earlier and substantially different revision of the answer, so I’ll retract.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the change, and thanks for posting here! $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jun 20 '19 at 15:39

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