[PaulDavisThe1st]

> But then make an unpopular observation on the aryicle / topic and you get down-voted.

Isn't that tautological?

Anyway, it's also not true as a general rule. The comments I see net-downvoted on HN are ones that either contain falsehoods and/or are poorly (often "rantily") written. I've seen many comments about a topic generally downvoted because they fit that pattern, but comments that express the same POV but avoid falsehoods and are reasonably written end up without a net negative.

If you're going to have votes, some things will get net-downvoted. There's no way around that - people have different opinions and scoring systems, and some comments will do poorly with some people.