This is also why I'm against negative reputation. The number of people who can down-vote and do so emotively rather than because something is factually inaccura

This is also why I'm against negative reputation. The number of people who can down-vote and do so emotively rather than because something is factually inaccurate is just plain depressing at times. Add to that people who "drive-by down-vote" - in that they'll mod something down but then fail to provide a rebuttal - really does nothing to keep those experienced engineers motivated to keep coming back to the comments section. Thus you end up with more uninformed drivel posted and more people arguing unsubstantiated bullshit. I used to come on HN daily. Now it's a couple of times a week (and even that feels too frequently at times). Simply because I can discover content without HN and the comments section is increasingly adding little value to HN's aggregation.