HN Dynamics - I just do not understand

You need to understand that HN is now huge, and no longer truly a community. There are people who have internalised the original ethos and take opinions and arguments on their merit, whether they agree or not, but now there are people who just down-vote anything they disagree with, even without reading it carefully, and certainly without thinking about it.

If you express an opinion and get a drive-by down-vote from someone who happens to disagree with you, or simply dislike your comment (no matter how well argued) then you can easily get several others pile on in a group-think down-vote mob.

It happens.

Shrug and move on. You can't buy anything with karma, and there will always be people who unthinkingly disagree and down-vote without regard for your opinion or argument.

Move on, contribute positively, and you will gain karma, and perhaps eventually recognition, reputation and respect.

You can also choose to use this as an opportunity to hone your debating skills. If you're about to express an unpopular or unexpected opinion, think not only about the rational aspects, but also the rhetorical and emotional aspects. Perhaps you can deflect the unthinking while still engaging those worth engaging.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

  > Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to info@ycombinator.com. 

In your blog, you write:

  > And I expect explanations, if I am downvoted. Yes, I have checked FAQs; I don't think I am abusing the facility. So, I still don't understand when does the HN community downvote?

Obviously, you didn't bother to read the guidelines/FAQ very carefully or you would not have made this submission to HN.

This submission of yours is meta-discussion (discussion about discussion) and as such, it is "not interesting" to many. In fact, many consider it outright annoying. If wasn't in an unusually benevolent mood, I'd flag it.

It seems you know HN well enough to realize that "Ask HN" posts (i.e. submissions that do not have an external URL) are weighted differently and drop from the listing quicker than submissions of external URLs. In other words, from an outside perspective it seems your choice of using an external blog post with a follow-up submission to HN to ask a question is intentional manipulation. Whether intentional or not, it either makes you look like an ass or makes you look like you're too lazy to figure out how HN works.

Your expectation of receiving explanations for down-votes has no basis in reality. A down-vote means different things to different people. It could disagreement with your opinion. It could be a hint that you're acting in a way that makes you seem like an ass. It could be your tone is a bit too sharp. You may have poor writing skills or rushed your response and failed to write clearly (happens to me a lot). You might have failed to consider the international aspect of this forum or realize civility can be quite different in different cultures. You might have had a bad day, or wrose, a "bad typing day" --When I have a bad typing day, my text looks like it was passed through ROT13.

Though there is no prohibition on humor here on HN, be very, very, very careful with it. One-liners, memes, and similar humor-only posts are considered by many to detract from the discussion, and hence are discouraged by down-votes. The safe bet is to let your sense of humor add spice to your attempt of adding to the discussion in a positive way. No, I'm not smart enough to take my own advice, so yes, I can admit to occasionally posting relevant and original one-liners... and of course, sometimes I pay dearly in down-votes for letting my sense of humor get the better of me.

Regardless of the reason for any down-vote or up-vote, the fact that someone took the time to give you feedback, positive or negative, is something you should always appreciate. Feedback helps you learn what other people consider to be useful, beneficial, and civil/polite contributions to a discussion.

One more point in addition to the other comments here: Whenever topics like Apple come up (as in your example), a lot of people for whatever reason are instantly emotionally involved (either that, or it attracts the emotionally involved ones). I believe the emotional involvement prevents a lot of productive discussion from happening.

Choose nearly any other topic and I would overall expect better discussion and less apparent subjectivity.

Last I heard, HN was up to 80K uniques a day. I have no idea how many are registered members who actually can vote and all that, but the human mind can only deal with a "tribe" of about 150 people. In most online forums, where roughly 20% of people actively participate, this means you can sustain the sense of community up to about 700 members. HN is waaaay beyond that. Flaky things happen. It took me a while to adjust. I still have bad moments where I just think some people here are buttheads. But most days it's okay. The good news is that the scale of the place tends to prevent the cliques and such that can cause so much trouble in so many online forums.

Take care.