philwelch, I think you miss the point. If the downvoting was aimed at remarks that were attempting to sabotage Hacker News, then you might have some ground to stand on. But the posts I'm thinking of involve material that I think should be allowed on Hacker News. So then the issue comes up, whose community norms are you enforcing? Not mine, that is sure. And what happens if I find myself in a community whose norms are different than mine? I leave. What is the end result of that, repeated, for many people?

My experience online has seen the same pattern, over and over, since the 90s:

1.) community is diverse and interesting

2.) core group finds some way to enforce community norms that match the preference of that core group

3.) some people leave the group because they disagree with the community norms being enforced by core group

4.) community becomes less diverse as it becomes increasingly associated with its particular community norms

5.) community becomes less interesting for the diverse group, simply because it is now less diverse

Downvoting on Hacker News is limited to those who've acquired some points, so when we talk about downvoting, we are automatically talking about a core group.

I like the way Clay Shirky describes things in his essay "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"

http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

I do think, at its best, Hacker News functions both as a source of information, but also as a source of emotional support for those who are trying to do startups. To the extent that the emotional support is an important element, what Shirky says about Bion is relevant:

"Bion was a psychologist who was doing group therapy with groups of neurotics. (Drawing parallels between that and the Internet is left as an exercise for the reader.) The thing that Bion discovered was that the neurotics in his care were, as a group, conspiring to defeat therapy."

and in particular:

"Now, Bion decided that what he was watching with the neurotics was the group defending itself against his attempts to make the group do what they said they were supposed to do. The group was convened to get better, this group of people was in therapy to get better. But they were defeating that. And he said, there are some very specific patterns that they're entering into to defeat the ostensible purpose of the group meeting together. And he detailed three patterns."

To the extent that Hacker News exists to be supportive of entrepreneurs, then aggressive downvoting is part of the pattern whereby a group undermines itself. I am going to be misunderstood on this point, so let me be clear: I do not think perpetual cheeriness is supportive of entrepreneurs, rather, I think honest feedback is, even when that feedback is harsh. Therefore I think a harsh tone is often the best way to be truly supportive of an entrepreneur. But a harsh tone is what often draws downvotes on Hacker News.

What you call "enforcing social norms" can also be called "telling people to go away". Because that is the effect - you are telling people "If you use that tone, we want you to go away." And this is in regards to remarks that are true. We are, after all, discussing remarks that were correct but got downvoted because of their tone. To me, this is the early part of the process of uniting a group against an external enemy:

"The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies. This is a very common pattern. Anyone who was around the Open Source movement in the mid-Nineties could see this all the time. If you cared about Linux on the desktop, there was a big list of jobs to do. But you could always instead get a conversation going about Microsoft and Bill Gates. And people would start bleeding from their ears, they would get so mad."

Hacker News is still young, and has not yet acquired this kind of total group think. But that is a risk that it faces. And the External Enemy it seems the most likely to unite against is those of us who say harsh but true things about technologies and startups.

I think I mostly get downvoted when people think I'm saying something negative. I think others also get downvoted for similar reasons. Positive remarks (about a person or business or technology) seem to get less downvotes than negative ones.

If you "enforce community norms" against people who say things that are true, but whose tone is harsh, then you will end up with a community where only a so-called "positive attitude" is allowed. And the kind of positive attitude I'm thinking of here is superficial and dangerous. I wrote about this in 2009, and I will quote myself:

What is the point of this thing called a “positive attitude”? Much of it is political – a desire to avoid facing painful realities. Often this is done to keep together a coalition of people – that is, to keep a group of people supportive of a project. We might be talking about the Iraq war, where the American government has relentlessly painted a prettier picture than what reality justified – and this lying was meant to keep the American people supportive of the war. Or we might be talking about a money losing business, in which case the workers and managers might by lying to the investors, so as to keep the investors supportive of the business. And for those who want to make their living that way, this is the one real use of a “positive attitude”.

This is the only positive attitude that a project really needs: the belief that a project can succeed. Once you have that belief, everything else should be criticism: what isn’t working, what needs to be fixed? Happy talk is the enemy of truth, and lies are an effective way to take a viable project and kill it.

http://www.teamlalala.com/blog/2009/04/06/the-importance-of-...

What I said in 2009 applies to Hacker News in 2011. Harshness can be a good thing, but you won't get much of it if you downvote it in the name of "enforcing community norms".