I believe you so my bad. But I got this impression from my erroneous understanding of the flamewar detector which you reference in another comment, but also bec

I believe you so my bad. But I got this impression from my erroneous understanding of the flamewar detector which you reference in another comment, but also because I know a penalty was put on my account even though I rarely make comments that go negative, though I often make comments that clearly get a lot of up AND down votes (obvious as I see the net go up and down, e.g. my comment at the top of this subthread, for which I give you permission to post the up and down totals in reply publicly). Daniel cleared that penalty but I obviously "earned" it back, as is evident from how my comments are ranked. I suggested to Daniel back then that HN should let users with penalties know that they have them, and show them what earned those penalties so that they can adjust their behavior. Feedback loops only work when the user understands the feedback. He agreed. It’s also important for transparency. It isn’t very honest to show us our positive karma scores but also keep a separate negative karma hidden.