Downvotes which one feels are unwarranted are best considered editorial feedback. Take them as evidence that your writing did not match the expectations of the audience which received it. This may be due to misassumptions about the nature of the audience, or due to a miscommunication of the point one is trying to make. The solution to downvotes one feels are unwarranted is improving one's writing.
I apologize -- I meant "punished" somewhat poetically. I meant only to convey that HN had shunned my comments with downvotes, fading those comments into the background of the page.
The point is that I am questioning what those expectations of the audience are. If you have read those threads, preferably in context, would you mind giving me your own personal judgement about whether or not my voice in those discussions is unwelcome or should be removed from the room? Particularly when set aside those comments of mine that were deemed to be welcome?
I'm not saying punishment doesn't happen. But the relevant questions are:
How could your posts have been better written?
Was their content thoughtful enough to be worth
submitting in the first place (or not deleting
after having been posted)?
As I said, take the votes as editorial feedback, and karma as a reflection of the quality of the writing not the author.
Before posting the grandparent, I gave the links a cursory review. It was pretty clear that there was nothing outstandingly insightful about the comments. There was a bit of meanness, however. Their tone was a bit argumentative without being informative, as well.
All one can do is support their writing with effort and bounce back from mistakes and rejection as an author.
[Edit] I will add that comments do get systematically downvoted in a thread when someone disagrees. This morning, all my comments in this thread were downvoted by one, in a very short period of time. It is not unsurprising given what I compared and the entity I criticized. If I was certain I had never done the same thing, I might complain about it. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864977 But I think I might have had a bad day, myself.
Downvotes which one feels are unwarranted are best considered editorial feedback. Take them as evidence that your writing did not match the expectations of the audience which received it. This may be due to misassumptions about the nature of the audience, or due to a miscommunication of the point one is trying to make. The solution to downvotes one feels are unwarranted is improving one's writing.