[petercooper]

An interesting, but rather unanticipated (I expect), side effect of your experiment is that even when you post something that's not too contentious, you're getting voted down to oblivion.

That shows there are plenty of HN users who do not understand HN policy. PG himself has said don't to crazy levels (such as under -10) unless it's obviously spam or the like..

[rms]

This happens to people all the time... it almost never works to reply to massively downmodded posts to try and salvage them. I wouldn't even recommend he apologize as that will probably be downmodded.

[petercooper]

Agreed. Besides, this post will blow over quickly (as they all do).

One thing I've noticed a lot in the past is that I'll post something I truly believe or feel but that's slightly contentious. I'll get downvoted to, say, -4 or so in the first few hours, but then voted up into positive territory over a day or two.

Perhaps those who aren't always trawling the site for new items are more realistic in their voting, whereas those who spend more time on the site are hastier and more damning.

[run4yourlives]

If he intends to experiment with the downvote threshold as he states, I certainly won't stand in his way.