They say resist it, which is materially different from saying not to do it. Goading is another story entirely. I will add that in practice, adding this defensi

They say resist it, which is materially different from saying not to do it. Goading is another story entirely. I will add that in practice, adding this defensive layer has had the opposite effect, it has resulted in more compassionate voting, rather than more downvotes, on my comments, which reinforces why I did it here and have done it in the past, so I question why it's such a big deal, to me, the big deal is the fact that there is an expectation of surprise downvotes, that you can't expect a discussion without driveby negative feedback is a sign of a very toxic community. Since this is a point of contention, though, I'll try to resist in the future, but I still call out to anyone to ask of the community – why do you downvote so readily, rather than upvoting equally as readily? Check out the Wikipedia article for critical positivity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_positivity_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_positivity_ratio – there's no reason we can't make HN a positive environment.