well taking up the whole thread is not an issue or is it? I quite enjoy talking with you to be honnest.

If the thread is relevant to the topic at hand, then no, and I think this is relevant.

you could have just ignored them and do nothing.

I could have, but I chose to downvote a handful of comments that I didn't think were adding anything to the discussion, and I felt could have been seen on any top 100 reddit thread.

but I understand that we don't share the same value as what downvoting mean, and I'm ok with that.

I'm ok with that as well, and I appreciate that we can have a civil discussion about it. Like I've already said, it wasn't a personal attack or me saying "shut up". If I wanted to do that, I'd have commented that, and likely been deservedly downvoted into oblivion, because that's just not productive.

Edit; My first reply sounds a bit authoritarian, I think, and that's not what I want to convey- I'm not saying there can't be discussions that slowly veer off the topic of the post, but at the same time, if you're clicking into post comments, you don't want the first thing you see to be a 50 comment chain that winds up in a heated name calling argument, or two people just talking about PS1 emulators on your @knitting post, especially when there's no way to collapse comments currently (officially).