| > "I don't understand HN culture sometimes. ... Why is he being down-voted simply because he's not jumping on the bandwagon?" There are a large number of people who read HN. While you might speculate as to why someone cast a particular vote in any particular direction (though we generally only notice the downvotes), it's not generally going to be useful. They may have voted for a reason you agree with, or one you don't, or one you don't understand at all. Note that you assume you know the reason they down-voted. And this is completely human: by default we attribute causes and stories and explanations, and it takes effort to explore more than those the first seem to fit the evidence. It's not a fault; as far as we can tell it's just a fact of human psychology. And if they didn't provide an explanation at the time, the likelihood of them doing so after the fact isn't all that high. This is I suspect one of the motivations for the HN guideline > "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If I were to speculate, I'd say it's a reaction to the last line: "Are you not the ultimate chump in participating in a system where you are bargaining implicitly from the weakest position?", as people don't generally react well to an implication that they're chumps, even made in passing as a hypothetical. I don't know whether that is the reason, or whether that's a valid reason, but I mention it as an example of another reason. All in all, just follow the guidelines. If you have something substantial to add, do so in the most constructive way you can, keeping in mind that while you can't control how others behave on HN, you can influence it by how you comment. I believe that's how we get to a level of discussion, as you well put it, a few cuts above the rest. |