Do you have some examples of quality technical comments (conforming to the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) being downvoted to hell? (Not disputing you at all, just curious for some concrete examples.)
I have a lot of examples, so why not show concrete examples? Because then those comments become the discussion and I don't want to go into a discussion that I've already said it's polarized, shaped as a popularity contest and thus rigged.
Maybe it's OK downvoting comments because they're factually wrong. But this has become downvoting comments because the downvoter has a different opinion. As soon as there is a very popular opinion, you can't even state facts that contradict that opinion without being downvoted.
I'm not here to promote some agenda. If I find uneasy to express an opinion, I just shut up, I don't lose anything personally.
Edit: if you really want, you can pass a comment through the barrier, with a lot of pre-emptive disclaimers and anticipating objections, seven paragraphs of socratic explanations and trying to sound so erudite as to seed a doubt to the knee-jerk downvoter. Too much work for simple stuff.
So I guess the answer is no, given that the first two comments are not technical comments, and while they were perhaps pithy or correct in their observations, they were not quality comments either.
Of I course I myself feel that I have been unfairly downvoted in the past, but I do have a more strict rule for when I would downvote someone than most people seem to have. On the other hand all my upvotes have been 100% totally deserved, I'm just lucky that way.
