> "there are people who downvote in group brigade fashion whatever they don't like." HN is a very large site with traffic in, I believe, the 6 figure range per

> "there are people who downvote in group brigade fashion whatever they don't like." HN is a very large site with traffic in, I believe, the 6 figure range per day. Some articles garner hundreds of comments and thousands of comment readers. It should not come as a surprise that, if you say something overly controversial, a handful of people might choose to downvote it without any collusion whatsoever. It only takes a few more downvotes than upvotes to put your comment solidly in the negatives. Given the controversial nature of many of my views, I'd have expected to catch the ire of a downvote ring at least once if such things existed. Yet I've only ever had one comment in the negatives (and a small handful at zero.) Perhaps there are downvote rings out there, but I haven't seen any evidence of them.