> Roughly agree, except there are official guidelines from the HN HQ so it isn't completely subjective. This is true, but even within the guidelines, there is

> Roughly agree, except there are official guidelines from the HN HQ so it isn't completely subjective. This is true, but even within the guidelines, there is considerable room for topics. Some people seem to want to constrain that further to some smaller set of topics they are personally interested in by using the downvote. > Maybe, but even if so I don't see it being a problem. HN isn't turning into an echo chamber because of it, HN has always been a self selected echo chamber, as are all self selected groups of people who choose to belong to a group focused on some area(s) of interest. Self-selected, narrowly focused? Sure. But an echo chamber is not what we want, they are by definition, undesirable. > Don't understand you. I wasn't clear I guess. My point being is that posts that are off-topic and generally disagreeable are not the ones being downvoted because by and large we tend not to have those too much on HN. The ones that are being downvoted are the ones that are, on topic, but have some other characteristic that the downvote patrol doesn't want to see, such as humor or a dissenting or contradictory voice.