There are <i>a lot</i> of people on HN, and <i>a lot</i> of people with downvote privilege, and there are <i>a lot</i> of people who just generally downvote because they disagree with something.<p>Even if your opinion is completely positive, if people disagree, and a lot of people see it, you will get downvoted <i>just because they disagree</i> (and no one will reply to your comment to disagree, it&#x27;s a drive-by-downvote).<p>There&#x27;s also verification of this by HN mods: Several comment threads exist where they keep increasing the downvote threshold (from 300, to 400, to 500, and beyond). But it still doesn&#x27;t solve the problem.