It happens, people are a little trigger happy on the Internet, but HN is a forum utopia compared to StackOverflow or Reddit.
In my experience, on here people downvote when the answer is either off topic/spam or false with regards to the topic. Sometimes some good comments are greyed out because the profile has been (wrongly) shadowbanned, but the "vouch" feature is great for that.
EDIT: is HN so good compared to the rest because of its moderation tools/upvote system, or because it attracts only a specific niche of people? Would a Reddit/SO with HN features work better than the current sites?
I think it's mostly the community and its culture. As another example, lwn.net attracts a somewhat similar crowd, has no moderation tools at all (it's extremely rare for a comment to be removed) and has generally interesting comments.
People in this thread downvoted comments that express unpopular opinions. Even factually wrong posts should not be suppressed but corrected/challenged in a reply. As the rules state, assume good faith.
Downvotes should be reserved for trolls and low effort posts.
I agree that HN is much nicer than SO or Reddit, but that is largely due to the moderators here.
In my experience, on here people downvote when the answer is either off topic/spam or false with regards to the topic. Sometimes some good comments are greyed out because the profile has been (wrongly) shadowbanned, but the "vouch" feature is great for that.
EDIT: is HN so good compared to the rest because of its moderation tools/upvote system, or because it attracts only a specific niche of people? Would a Reddit/SO with HN features work better than the current sites?
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