> I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool!

And

> Downvote away!

You're being far over the top dramatic. It's unnecessary, your setup text did a perfectly fine job of making the argument. The two comments about downvoting detract from the substance.

Is it over the top dramatic because of the exclamation mark?

Regardless, I feel it's important to point out a consistent hypocrisy I've witnessed and experienced. I think it's totally relevant and substantive.

edit: I have no desire to continue a metadiscussion on downvoting. I don't care about downvotes, the downvotes are a symptom of an entirely relevant issue; a community that has a ridiculous double standard for Linus. It was not an attempt to attract or prevent downvotes, or to discuss downvotes, or downvoting, or the culture of voting on HN.

I brought up downvotes as an example of the underlying issue. Clearly I did a poor job of that as it's led to a number of unrelated comments. I apologize for the clutter that a one-off comment on hypocrisy has caused.

It's unnecessary and against the HN guidelines to comment on downvotes.

> "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That includes votes you're expecting. It distracts from the substance of what you're trying to say.

If you're concerned or thinking about downvotes when you're composing your comment, rethink how you can phrase it: if you think you're "speaking truth to power", "saying what must be said", or "pointing out hypocrisy", or something similar, you're already starting from a position of antagonism, real or imagined. People aren't going to respond to that well. Figure out — or at least attempt to find — a way to express what you're trying to get across in a way that'll be actually heard and understood by those you're trying to reach. What's actually going to make a difference?

If you think that they can't be reached or it's not worth the effort to try to do so, it's likely not worth the effort to comment at all. Given that you are participating on HN, please do make the effort. After all, that's one of the features HN members value: good, quality, constructive discussion.

Attempting to preempt downvotes is passive aggressive and adds nothing to the conversation; adding emphasis is doubling down on that mistake. It never actually works toward preventing downvotes, and instead attracts them. That makes it difficult to know whether the person is trying to lure downvotes on purpose for self-fulfilling prophecy reasons, or whether they actually believe it helps to try to preempt such.

If your argument has merit, it can stand alone. Responding to an avalanche of downvotes after the fact is the only thing I've seen on HN that makes sense. For example to try to counter a perception (eg if you think your argument is being taken incorrectly, or challenging the downvoters to discuss why they're downvoting; that can draw out more substance to a conversation).

See my edit: I don't want to continue this discussion as I have a fairly high up comment and I think this is just a bunch of clutter for the purpose of meta discussion. Talk about 'makes for boring reading'.

> given that this is not the first time I've posted something similar

Funny, I didn’t see that in your ten day long comment history.

A human being can only have one account on one website. How about this - you delete your post, and I delete my post, and we both contribute to the conversation by removing useless posts!