[rawland]

Observed a similar behavior yesterday with critical comments towards Apple's Swift and its similarity to LightTable. I guess a few HN members sense trolling or exert implicit trolling towards critical comments by downvoting them.

Got me started to think about:

http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/23/i-quit-hacker-news/

Matt's reasons:

  1. Lack of down-vote means vocal minorities are
     disproportionately represented.

  2. Votes on comments are used to express agreement
     or disagreement rather than value, perhaps because
     many people simply cannot see the difference
     between the two.

  3. The community is full of ideologues to the point
     where the comments are most often just predictable
     talking points being regurgitated ad nauseum.

  4. The community is often snobbish and out of touch
     with how the other half lives.

  5. It's a time suck.

  6. It removes comments from where they should be,
     on the destination site.

  7. It reduces blogging time.

Food for thought.

Disclaimer: I'm a devotee of HN; It's home, but also I'm a devotee of critical thinking.