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The biggest lost opportunity I find here on HN are not with the comments moderated poorly or that were banned, but with the comments never posted and the discussions that never happened because of harsh anonymous downvoting.

Donwvotes on HN are anonymous and silent. This equates to being slapped in the face by someone with a mask on while you're in the middle of a conversation, without knowing why, and not being able to do anything about it. In a real conversation, disagreeing with someone involves actually opening your mouth and talking to that person, and even then is not rewarded with an immediate punishment to the person you're disagreeing with. This is what leads to a discussion, or better yet, a debate. Instead, the only recourse on HN is to change how you talk or to keep quiet.

But at this point I must assume this is an intentional design decision, and I adjust my tone and substance accordingly. But I wouldn't be writing this if I weren't okay with HN's rules.

(edit/addendum: this isn't to say there are no discussions or debates on HN... but I hope other's agree there is something uniquely HN about most of them)

At some point I came to the conclusion that the best reaction I could have to being downvoted was to take it as editorial criticism on my writing. This means just assuming that I didn't make my point clearly or that I was mistaken or didn't use the right approach to the reader. When I am downvoted, I tend to edit my comments. Sometimes this means changing the words around.

And sometimes it means deleting the comment. Not because I'm afraid of being banned, but because it's not very good. I've found that deleting not very good comments is good practice. That just saying the stupid thing that I feel compelled to say is enough. I don't need someone to actually read it. I'd rather have people read my occasional good comment.

On the flip side. Sometimes I downvote a comment in lieu of arguing. Actually, it's probably a lot more often than sometimes. Those downvotes are in lieu of mostly unproductive xkcd386 "someone is wrong on the internet" comments I might write if downvoting and moving on wasn't an option.

There are things about which it is reasonable to disagree. For example I believe that discussion is more productive than debate and that conversation is far more productive than either because it doesn't require opposing viewpoints as a starting point and doesn't entail the idea of winning or scoring points.

There are plenty of other places I could do that.