The Value of Downvoting, or, How Hacker News Gets It Wrong

First, I should apologize for my misunderstanding. I do feel like a doofus for not realizing that downvotes are possible on HN. But I swear I have never seen a single downvoted post any time I’ve visited! I am a very occasional HN user, mostly a lurker, and my karma is not even 2 digits. :)

In my defense:

1) There's definitely an element of "if the user can’t find it, the feature doesn't exist" with downvoting here.

2) In practical terms, downvotes are so extraordinarily rare on HN that they almost don’t exist.

Anyway, I'm encouraged that downvotes exist on HN, but the threshold could be considered so absurdly high that they're nerfed into oblivion.

Actually, I've noticed several downvoted posts in my short time here. Caveat: I think this is more a result of trollish posting in many of the cases, but of course that is another problem on its own.

See:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507278

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507604 (the downvoting on this does seem questionable, although it is an extreme position)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507301

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=505452

Those are comments, not posts. Posts themselves cannot be downvoted.