> As a site that aims to set high standards for community participation, it paints a bleak picture of societal discourse at large and in fact people who stand up for basic social norms and respect are the ones who get unfairly downvoted and admonished.

Ironic when you bemoan the discourse but then downvote discourse with which you disagree. If we followed your lead, HN would become an echo chamber.

Why shouldn’t MRA, as an example, be part of the discourse when the topic is appropriate? If anything, it provides a contrast and intelligent people can make their own decisions based on the arguments. And your comments about red pill stuff indicates that you don’t actually want “discourse” that goes against your own biases.

And “bad commentary?” What is that exactly? Commentary that counters your beliefs? Let’s take a contrived example. If we discuss minimum wage and someone opposes it, it would seem that would be downvoted because the mere thought of such of thing is deemed offensive, merits of the argument be damned.

By downvoting something, you are essentially saying “this should not be on HN” because the results of excessive downvotes means that the comment is literally greyed out. If the only thing that should be on HN is an opinion with which you agree, then what’s the point? It becomes an echo chamber. If someone supports Trump and makes a contextually relevant comment about that, it gets downvoted because we aren’t supposed to like Trump. It gets classed as “bad commentary” when in fact, it could be extremely relevant commentary even if you happen to disagree with the conclusions or reasoning. The very term misogyny itself is extremely loaded. Opposing women diversity initiatives isn’t necessarily misogynistic, but even expressing such an opinion gets downvoted without even addressing the substance of the argument. It’s the equivalent of a child sticking his fingers in his ears and singing la la la when encountering an idea that he doesn’t which to hear.

Climate change is another good example, expressing any skepticism about the default view is met with downvotes — yet scientific debate is supposed to be filled with skepticism rather than dogma. Climate skeptics are treated as flat-earthers despite there being light years of difference between the observable fact of a round earth and the debatable theory that using a car warms the earth. Trying to compare an extraordinary complex system like the climate to a simple observable fact that there is no edge of the earth is designed to marginalize dissenting views by comparing them with an absurd view. It’s like discussing religion at this point. No amount of convincing will change someone’s mind about their chosen god. Even broaching the subject is met with downvotes. But science isn’t religion yet on certain topics, there is a religious-like faith that any competing evidence is automatically “bad commentary.” Imagine if the bad commentary argument were listened to when it came to genetics. Lysenkoism would be considered “scientific fact.” In the Soviet Union Lysenkoism was law. Eugenics was another place where the term “settled science” got used a lot. The political support of Eugenics made an indelible mark on early 20th century science and public policy. It too was “settled science” and those opposed would have been downvoted in the 1915 version of Hacker News.

Dogmatic downvoting is a poison of HN. It’s pointless to discuss anything if the discussion consists of simply variations of agreement.