Don't feel bad. I've been down-votted and banned into obscurity meerly for providing my opinion. Do as I did, get a gigantic list of all legislators and government officials, sent them a nice letter informing them of how HN's policies are rotten to the core. In my case I took screenshots, sent those too. When I post something such as now, only I can see it while logged in. When logged off, I can't see my posts. Will take pictures in both states, send those pictures to those legislators in my list :)

Sol Roth Annex HN

The downvotes are because the discussion isn't really about "which option do users prefer". It's actually about returning user choice. As the original comment said: "If I want a separate tab, I can Cmd+click and Browsers don't have the reverse option for opening in the same window."

So when you say "Nope!", you're being downvoted because you're implicitly saying "actually users don't deserve choice".

I like the new tab as well. Otherwise I will forget what I went to. My process is to go through an interesting site, like HN, and then be able to see these interesting sites after that.

I guess it depends on a persons web workflow though

The downvoters meant to demonstrate that they prefer the standard/expected behavior and would like OP to ignore your opinion on the matter.