However, my voting rights were removed, and when I asked HN by contact email I was told I was behaving like a "troll" - the reasoning: I upvoted comments other people had downvoted, so I must be out to cause trouble! I gave up that account and don't care any more, I also hardly ever participate any more. I think the HN site admins contribute to this, being called a "troll" for doing what I still think was reasonable - I did not upvote a single comment that was in any way, shape or form objectively bad. They all had no insults, were no "cheap shots", not too short, not useless - they didn't even voiced troubling opinions. I still don't understand why they were dowvoted in the first place. The opinion of the site admin seems to be "you have to live with downvotes" and, at least in my case, when you try to work against what I think is clear downvote-abuse, you are assumed to be a "troll".
Okay, I think voicing a negative opinion about the site is going to go down well... but that's okay. I think this site would be better off with no voting at all, given that a sizable number of downvoted comments don't deserve it at all.