People down-modding controversial comments is my only criticism of HN - if you disagree you shouldn't downmod, rather write a reply explaining why you disagree;

People down-modding controversial comments is my only criticism of HN - if you disagree you shouldn't downmod, rather write a reply explaining why you disagree; the karma of each post will show where the consensus lies. The guidelines do indicate things should work this way - using only downmods for comments that are negatively adding to the conversion - but this doesn't seem to happen enough in practice.