[dang]

People always project whatever ideology they disagree with onto the moderators. C'est le job. Plenty of accusations go the other way—randomish sample:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22256458

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21588105

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19912334

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742578

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21803541

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21907232

(sorry...hard to stop)

People also chronically overinterpret whatever they see on HN that they don't like—again, myriads of comments make the opposite generalization to yours. Randomness plus cognitive bias equals narrative.

[ajross]

Yet it wasn't like this in the past. And while I won't make the same accusations I do think it would be good for you guys to look at the culture that gets encouraged here. There is a viciousness to the voting here and an intolerance of opinion that just doesn't match the seemingly sophisticated comments.

[dang]

You seem to be talking about voting patterns while I'm talking about cognitive biases leading to bogus generalizations. Those seem like two distinct "it"s.

As for voting patterns, I'm not sure I agree. For example, it's not true that downvotes used to be reserved for something factually incorrect. The voting mechanisms are subject to the same psychology as they always were.

Your comments often argue in edgy ways that are not exactly in keeping with the spirit of this site. From my perspective that's more likely why they're getting downvotes. I took a quick look and your comments that I saw which were upvoted don't seem to have this quality. Usually, when people complain about downvotes, there's something in their comments that they're not aware of, but which is apparent to readers. Of course there are also downvotes simply because of disagreement, but all comments get those, and they usually get fixed by corrective upvotes if there's nothing else in the comment that has a downvoteable quality.