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I agree with you that people can get pretty worked up about the topic of free software, but I think you need to be a bit braver in the face of downvoting and disagreement. I can't ever recall seeing a respectful, well-thought post getting downvoted below 0 on hacker news.

One tactic for this situation is to post your truth then never look at the thread again. It might be rude to people who want to engage in honest discussion on your point, but if your post was a good one it will still benefit the hn community more than not posting at all, and you won't have to stress about troll replies.

Just be respectful. Assume the people reading your post are as smart as you and your post won't get hammered.




I've been downvoted below zero plenty of times -- sometimes when I am attempting to present a non-standard potentially provocative opinion -- but often not. I've also had comments that started off w/ a few upvotes and then went south to -4, and others that started off w/ a few downvotes and went up (this is less frequent).

I think part of the problem is you get penalized pretty quickly w/ the shading differences, and people are happy to knock you down. Believe it or not, the post you are responding to go at least one downvote before the upvotes boosted it back to normal text color.

As for your tactic for "post[ing] your truth" this doesn't work so much if it does get downvoted, since it fairly quickly becomes near invisible.


update: the post you are responding dropped to 0, went up to 3 (presumably both upvoted and downvoted along the way), and has dropped again to 1. I find these trends fascinating.




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