I browse with showdead on permanantly, and I normally find that things that have been downvoted to oblivion were truely for spam or inflammatory/bad faith. That

I browse with showdead on permanantly, and I normally find that things that have been downvoted to oblivion were truely for spam or inflammatory/bad faith. That's not always the case, but it is definitly the majority I see. Unpopular opinions I normally find stay near 0. It's not perfect, but I do think HN tends to actually behave decently with respect to downvotes (and I think needing 500 karma to do so is a big part of it - you have to spend the time and get familiar with the culture first)