From the early comments I think I linked the concept of being downvoted to "karma" too strongly. This was because the Hacker News Guidelines state (http://ycom

From the early comments I think I linked the concept of being downvoted to "karma" too strongly. This was because the Hacker News Guidelines state (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. My assumption is that people had read this and largely obey the guidelines.