Exactly. I saw that and was really surprised. Burying you comment like that was an aggressively unfriendly act; two adjectives I never thought I would use to describe this place.

I think one issue is that there is no way to express disagreement with the worthiness of the original story. No downvote on stories, no bury etc. So instead some people most likely express that by downmodding any comments that agree with the storys worthiness.

I'd really like a downvote on articles, although it's a tricky decision I guess.

I quite often up vote a comment I wouldn't normally touch if it's negative karma seems unjustified.

I do the same; a while back there was a discussion on HN (approximately): "what do you do when you see someone being downmodded unfairly?"

Up/down votes on comments should be, in my view, for whether you thought the comment was worth reading or not, irrespective of viewpoint. Likewise for upvotes on stories.

Downmod for bad grammar.

I'm kidding, but I've been dishing out karma lately, if I even so much as agree slightly with someone, or think that their viewpoint is slightly interesting/relevant.

edit: I suspect that the person that downmodded me has no sense of humour :)

Initially you may worry about karma (as I did too) but we have to realise it does not exist (and that it does not matter)!

I now appreciate down votes and see it as a way for the community to 'teach me' (not in a negative way par se but as a guiding/helping hand) in the simplest way possible.

:)

That brings up an interesting idea - karma is used to rank stories and comments, and make sure more interesting content is more visible. But the "game" aspect of karma (trying to make the top posters list, trying to appear a the top of threads) probably encourages some unhelpful behavior.

If users really shouldn't care about their karma, would the site be served better by not making karma visible at all, for users or for comments? You could keep upvotes and downvotes, and even let users know their own karma and how their own comments are rated (so they know when their contributions are being rewarded), but their would be no high-score table of top users, and users would only be able to guess at a post or a comments karma based on where it appears on the page.

This would take away the motivation some people have to contribute high-quality comments - I'm not sure whether the net result would be positive or negative.

Part of this discussion needs to include a serious discussion of what this site's core goals are. If this site were a web startup that needed to get high traffic, than a game-like system that gets posters addicted to writing comments to try and boost their karma makes sense. If the site is more about making sure it has the highest quality content possible for its original niche target audience, than that would make this approach less appropriate.

I've also learned from this. But sometimes it's hard because you are left guessing "why" someone downmodded you. For instance, I've recently been left thinking that I can be too brief with comments...but I'm not sure that is true. An intelligent and knowledgeable crowd needs and wants less wordiness.

I have learned to stay away from political discussions. Ouch!

knew that (karma hit) would happen :)

I’ve noticed the same reaction. I’ve posted some comments that disagreed with others and I got downvoted – so it is really discouraging to disagree. I think that the solution here could be that next to karma there is courage section for people who are not afraid to disagree. There should also be something like “Karma Court” where respected guys from YC community decide if the post that got downvoted was plain stupid/disrespectful or just disagreeing. The members of Karma Court should bee respected fans of YC - motivation to become karma judges could be even bigger respect and recognition from other community members. What do you think of that?

I think you might be over-thinking this a bit! (uh-oh--here comes the Karma hit....)

You maybe right.