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If they could vote your submission down, they would. They can't, so they're voting your comments down.

If that doesn't make sense to you, just give it a few more minutes and the submission will probably be flagged dead.

This is exactly one of the problems. People downvote because it is how they feel not because there is any logic to it. Unless the negative points reaches threshold, it is suspect. Downvoting should also consist of a comment as to why. When a professor marks your paper wrong, does he not place things on it like "W.C." and so on? How are people supposed to learn from their mistakes if they think what they wrote was reasonable yet some HN user comes along, misunderstands what was written, and just votes it down?

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