Don't sweat the downvotes! Often it means you are right but ahead of your time.

I think there should be rewards for getting highly downvoted comments that aren't mean (but are constructive but express an unpopular opinion).

Or you could be incredibly wrong. And it can be hard to differentiate between the whether you're ahead of your time, or just wrong.

> I think there should be rewards for getting highly downvoted comments that aren't mean (but are constructive but express an unpopular opinion).

It's just as easy to express a viewpoint that sounds smart but is absolutely ridiculous. Some unpopular opinions are actually nonsensical, others have merit but people just don't want to accept the ideas. That's the issue with the karma system: people decide the merit, and people can't differentiate between the two unless they're incredibly open minded - most people aren't.

Lobste.rs has an interesting system where downvoted need to be accompanied by a reason.

I think it's pretty clear by now there are both incredibly rude people and incredibly generous people on HN - despite that I understand how you feel, because this is a community, after all, and there is an inherent desire to be accepted when participating.

Karma scores are really, really irrelevant. To paraphrase an old saying, "90,000 karma and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee."

You know that when you get downvoted 200-300 points and you laugh, you have discarded for good the very idea of karma points having value. I did.

When I left left Reddit at the start of this year, I had something like 50,000 karma. To say it like that means I only remember the value to somewhere within 10,000. So that means my actual karma was somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000. 20,000 karma is quite a big range if karma has any value at all, and yet it is just a meaningless and irrelevant number.

Now repeat after me: "Karma is just a random number that has no meaning at all in real life."

The only issue with this mindset is posting restrictions (e.g. on reddit) if your overall karma score drops too low.

Karma systems work great if everyone used them as intended, for quality of content or thought, but they're more often used for how much you agree with the sentiment of a comment and if it agrees with the philosophy of the person voting, regardless of the merit of the comment.

For that reason, I'm sure there must be a better way to do karma for a site that is made to be productive, and not just an echo chamber.

I sometimes react similarly to downvotes, especially when I believe I'm saying something that isn't controversial. My solution is to just hide scores, I don't need to know when lots of people generally agree, and I'm hoping that people will comment if they believe I'm very much wrong/have missed something important. It's similar to all this "dance as if nobody's watching" self-help stuff: comment as if nobody is voting.

Step out of your comfort zone.

Create a new account and make its goal to gather as much negative karma on HN as possible. This process may help you outgrow the fear and to grow as a person.

What's the worst that can happen? Your handle gets banned from the site? Nobody will miss a sleep over that.

As someone who might be a consumer of content written by that negative karma farming account, please do not do this. One of the most annoying things on Internet forums is trolls intentionally seeking downvotes.

There have to be ways to boost your self esteem without pissing off the rest of the world.

I especially hate downvotes with no comment replies. Leaves me wondering which part of my comment was not good and why. I always thought it would be a good idea to require a reply for any downvote.

HN is not fond of humour or dry wit. But sometimes you just have to post it and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous down votes.

So true, humor is essential to (my) life though.

I have a similar reaction. There are times I post a bunch of comments in a row just to push a thread off my user page so I can check replies to other comments without having to see that thread that's making me upset.

If I'm wrong, I feel bad that I was wrong but I'm happy other people have let the general public know I was wrong by downvoting my comment. More often though, I'm right and people just don't want to hear it.

The fastest way to get downvoted is by saying "I like typing on Apple's new keyboard, the Esc key on the Touchbar works just fine for me, and their Pro lineup fits my needs perfectly as a professional". Every statement in there might be true but there is a group of HN users who cannot stand the thought that any of those statements might be true and will absolutely destroy your karma for it.

Without any penalty for downvoting unpopular opinions, it's just something we have to deal with. And if it starts to get too much, I jump ship to Lobste.rs for a bit where the community is less toxic overall and downvoting is substantially harder.