rektide> "Edit: anyone care to speculate on why I'm so quickly at -2? I think there's perhaps some ideogical disagreement here but it's not clear what is so principally intolerable about a perspective against such persistent & vociferous negativity."

My speculation: you're reading a lot more heat into 'tptacek's comments than is there, and raising the temperature of the discussion unnecessarily. For example:

rektide> "My god man."

rektide> "I don't see how you can so callously disregard the most central message & imagery of this book. Yes, the individual ideas are ill spoken & poorly emphasized pieces of the key revelation"

I don't read 'tptacek as callously disregarding anything. Those examples are used to support esr's thesis, and to use them to test whether or not the thesis is supported is fair. And "callously disregarding" is pretty charged language.

rektide> "...and in your 9 comments here so far you have nothing but bile to spill about them perhaps rightly."

Again, "nothing but bile" is pretty charged and in my opinion an inaccurate description of his comments. The most arguably hyperbolic part I read from him is "I think a case can be made that this is one of the most overrated pieces of technical writing of the last 25 years, and even that is tempered by the preface "I think a case can be made that". There are places where he's pretty declarative in his language, but nothing I read is pejorative or an attack/

rektide> "But I cannot broke this hit campaign you are launching, when you are so persitently cantankerous & negative, without ever going near the actual inner truth that it did remarkably connect a generation with. I wish you could have some balance & some ability to see value, Thomas."

There are numerous places where 'tptacek acknowledges positive aspects of the piece:

tptacek> "What's notable about Cathedral is its timing; it did capture the zeitgeist of what was an important moment in the computing field"

And is actively engaged in furthering the discussion:

tptacek> "I appreciate getting called on this and forced to think more carefully about it. Thanks for the response!"

rektide> "The true-feeling parts of Raymond's article read to me like a document of, for lack of a better term, late 1990s programming thinking."

Again, pretty charged.

Anyway, that's what I think is likely the cause of the downvotes from reading your comment in the context of what 'tptacek has written. But of course, I'm not a mind reader.

(I'm just sharing my impressions because you asked and in the hope that you find them useful: I'm not likely to follow up in this thread because discussions of downvoting and tone are rarely useful. I question the utility of me even posting this response.)