Hm, I see a fruit factory fanboi has been downvoting my recent posts again. Tiring but that's the price you pay for daring to speak up here. This place would be so much more tolerable if that down-vote arrow came with some price, e.g. 'you have X down-votes left for this week, use them wisely' or if the down-voter had to give a reason (visible to all) for the downvote in combination with a meta-moderation system like Slashdot of old (and maybe of today, no idea since I left that place aeons ago). The way it currently works it is far too easy to do the Wikipedia thing here, i.e. downvote into oblivion any voice outside of some accepted narrative. In combination with the virtual ban on discussing downvotes - the first rule of the Lumber Cartel is 'never discuss the Lumber Cartel' [1] - this makes HN more welcoming to knee-jerk downvoters and less welcome to free and open discussion. A shame, really, the place would be more interesting with more of the latter and fewer of the former.

[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/L/Lumber-Cartel.html