> It only takes a few instances of seeing your well-written, polite comments with citations being downvoted immediately to -3 to know that unpopular opinions ar

> It only takes a few instances of seeing your well-written, polite comments with citations being downvoted immediately to -3 to know that unpopular opinions aren’t welcome. That’s how the echo chamber is propagated. While that might happen every once in a while, it is important to remember that politely worded comments with citations can (and often are) still rude, wrong, misguided, and/or spin. Unfair downvotes to death have even happened to me once or twice, but I don’t think HN is going to hell in a handbasket yet. I think I’ve seen a lot more people jumping to conclusions about why downvotes are cast than I have of actually positive and helpful comments being unfairly downvoted purely for harmless but unpopular opinions. Unless the downvoter explains their reasons, we don’t know why the downvotes were cast, so it’s not safe to assume it’s for popularity reasons just because it appears polite. HN threads are sometimes interesting because they can attract experts in the domain of the posted article, and it’s common for people who are curious but relatively ignorant to argue with people who really know what they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell who’s who. Either way, if you see comments that don’t deserve to be gray, upvote them!