Please do not make this a personal attack on me, one member of the community.

I argue that submitting nothing is better than submitting garbage links. Additionally, I am not bringing the site down by voting up egregious headlines.

I think what kyro is trying to say is, if you don't like what you see on HN - why not submit the type of articles you'd like to see, hopefully starting a trend?

imho it doesn't help that your post sounds more like whiny bitching than constructive criticism

Fair enough, and I agree with that.

but look at the behavior of the community right now. The highest voted comment on this post is basically a "screw you dude" and all of my responses are downvoted without any reasons given.

Below in comments I stated what I personally would like to see change, but that too is downvoted without explanation.

These reactions are reinforcing my original point: Though many precautions were taken, Hacker News is no more immune to large group behavior than were Digg and Reddit. The community has reached a tipping point.

You essentially just called a community stupid. When provoked with such nonconstructive criticism, I'm not sure why you would expect said community to respond with anything but "No, you're stupid."

and are you helping the site out by flagging down the articles you have problems with?

Can the downvoters please explain why you are voting me down?

If they could vote your submission down, they would. They can't, so they're voting your comments down.

If that doesn't make sense to you, just give it a few more minutes and the submission will probably be flagged dead.

This is exactly one of the problems. People downvote because it is how they feel not because there is any logic to it. Unless the negative points reaches threshold, it is suspect. Downvoting should also consist of a comment as to why. When a professor marks your paper wrong, does he not place things on it like "W.C." and so on? How are people supposed to learn from their mistakes if they think what they wrote was reasonable yet some HN user comes along, misunderstands what was written, and just votes it down?

I downvoted you because you quickly played the "personal attack" card in the same breath as you laid all the blame for what you perceive as a slide in HN quality at the feet of those who upvote different stories than you would -- which amounts to a personal attack. The obvious loop in your argument makes your comment uninteresting.

And actually, for all intents and purposes, HN is a service being provided to me, whereby I sit and expect it to present me with interesting stories.

How is it any different for you?