Why is the post downvoted to hell?
1. All moderation is public information.
2. Who invited who is public information.
3. You need to pick a reason for downvoting something.
4. You can undo a downvote or an upvote.
Perhaps because of these properties (or something else), I also enjoy the conversations and community there better.
Frankly, I am annoyed that I can't read what your post said without copy/pasting it into a text document. WTH HN? Don't treat us like children.
It's obvious his post was downvoted for no good reason (as many posts on HN are). By making them difficult to read you're just making it difficult for others to evaluate even what reason it might have been downvoted for was.
(P.S. If you want a Lobsters invite, see my profile.)
Do the moderators of HN have any comprehension of how completely incompetent they are at what they're doing? HN today is the perfect example of a profoundly squandered opportunity, and it literally gets worse by the day. It has gone from must-visit to "meh...everything else is exhausted".
But I get a little bit of delight imagining these -- and I apologize, but it is the only word that fits -- hacks conjecturing up some philosophy that makes them productive and useful, instead of destructive and futile.
If I made a comment along the lines of "I think the HN moderators hire hitmen to kill commenters they don't like," that would probably get downvoted very quickly and very harshly. This would not be proof that the moderators put hits on commenters — it just shows that baseless conspiracy theories are not very popular here.
However I stick by my observation. The brain trust behind HN moderation, having moved on from their asinine slowbans and hellbans, have gone to something that they think is trickier. Only it's, again, hilariously naive.
The fact that you would even consider such an absurd response really sets the bar for HN today.