For example, I agree with what you wrote recently[1] about diet fads, but you did yourself a disservice by starting the comment with, "What? No! Fucking hell."
Your position is reasonable, but it begins like a lot of angry, irrational rants that we see on HN. I assume some people downvoted without getting past the first sentence.
I think something similar happened when you railed against reddit[2]. I agree with you, but you come across as cranky.
Finally, I see some examples of personal comments that are often downvoted. In one case, you say someone is a libertarian without knowing them (and seemingly in a dismissive way)[3]. You also have at least one post flagged for being personal[4].
My overarching suggestion is this: HN has a very different implicit culture than reddit. While I agree with you on almost all of your ideological positions, I also agree with HN's downvotes most of the time.
The culture of "unemotional, value-add comments only" gives HN a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than reddit. There are also surprisingly few flamewars here.
If you find your emotions appearing in your comment, take a few more seconds to re-read and edit them out. I think that in the marketplace of ideas, yours are fairly reasonable and popular, but the tone seems to rub people here the wrong way.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20141441
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19572278
I will admit that perhaps I got too personal on occasion. Also I was not aware of the rules for comments as I had not previously read them.
I browsed some of your comment history for evidence supporting your position.
I saw that your downvoted comments fit into buckets I often see downvoted (what I observe, not what I do myself):
- excessive profanity
- making a factual mistake
- saying something sarcastic
In the case of sarcasm, HN seems to dislike it either because the comment is taken sincerely or because it "doesn't add" to the conversation.
I didn't see any evidence that you were downvoted for skepticism.