Oh. Maybe you are being downvoted for advertising your startup too much?

Maybe. I'm trying to advertise a solution to the problem. My startup is just one possible implementation of it.

Edit: Another solution would be to ask people to explain when they downvote. Please, what's wrong with THIS comment?

You should probably ignore downvotes until at least -2. It could be just one random idiot and it doesn't mean anything.

His first comment is now -19 and his other two were -3 before I came in here. Why all the pile-on downvoting for no real reason, people? Are those comments really worth -19?

It is called karma bombing and it just proves the point.

Compare it to the solution where there's a recommendation system that helps everybody involved: the ones downvoting the posts will form one cluster, the ones upvoting them will be in another. People that like stories like that will see more, people that do not will be spared from them.

It's a community response to your suggestion that we should leave Hacker News and go to Jaanix because of the evils of downvoting. Downvoting is communication, it's really not a fault of the system if you find it too painful to hear.

My communication skills must be terrible, but I'm not asking anybody to leave. Hacker News is great, but it covers only small subset of all the news out there.

Pointing out what you (and others) see as a problem with this news site, and suggest it as a reason to go to your news site, only makes sense if you don't see them as independent.

Funnily enough, I (and I guess many people here) am only interested in a small subset of "all the news out there". More is less.

About your proposed solution of "clusters": Getting people to explore outside of their comfort zone, and letting them encounter ideas that challenge their faith-based views, is actually a good thing. Insular clusters do sound "safe" but I would not assume that is a net positive.

Maybe it shouldn't be possible to vote anything below -5.

edit: i posted this in feature requests thread