[currysausage]

Deleted my comment because after the third or so downvote in about 5 minutes, I really felt like my (possibly conservative) perspective was not welcome here, or that my comment actually was misplaced. Thanks for your comment though, now I wish I hadn't deleted mine.

[ixmatus]

Yeah, in the future don't delete your comment unless you've been convinced that you really were being a troll or asshole. Stimulating discussion is what makes this site great and don't let the wannabe hackers that don't know how to have such a discussion deter you from posting.

Hacker News is a funny place and you'll find contrarian points of view tend to be "jumped on" unless you use difficult to refute language that pulls your disagreeing commenters or downvoters into a logical argument.

The other guy that commented on yours is a good example of language that's less "enticing" for trolls and still provides an interesting counterpoint to the original article.

[JunkDNA]

Also, have some faith in the rest of us to correct a situation where someone is getting unfairly downvoted. I frequently upvote people who are unfairly being beaten up.

[snowwrestler]

I have had comments that go against the grain of a conversation go all the way to light gray, then about 24 hours later they are well into the positive.

My subjective experience is that there seem to be "shifts" on HN. Folks who are too busy during the day to surf HN may log in during the evening; these folks collectively might be more welcoming toward a skeptical or conservative comment.

And even if some of your comments go negative, there's not really any reason to delete them IMO. It's a learning experience...either you learn that you got it wrong, or you learn that most other people have it wrong. :-) Karma is just fake Internet points anyway.

[dang]

> I frequently upvote people who are unfairly being beaten up

Me to, and I hope it's true of most users here.