Likewise. It's been going on for a while. When it first started I was wondering if it would pass or if this is a strange attractor of these types of sites or what-have-you. Now, I am disappointed. Every now and again it appears like someone will downvote a lot of my comments without comment.
It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO.
It's not necessarily malicious. It could be someone checking out your other posts to see where you're coming from, and then finding out that in turns out they disagree with all of your recent comments.
I agree, but that would probably be rare, especially across threads. The culture here for a while (HN in its "prime") was that if something merited a downvote, then it merited a comment articulating the dissent. We didn't have too many trolls (a few, but not many), so most of the time it was better to stimulate the discussion by posting your explicit disagreements.
In fact, it was common to upvote people who presented an interesting opinion even if you disagreed with it.
Now it's common to see someone downvoted into the gray without a single response. In short, if somebody has to ask "why the downvotes?" we're doing it wrong. (Presumably trolls know why they are getting downvoted.)
While that's true, it does seem like a pattern. I've been downvoted in recent days for offering someone praise for a sharing something useful. I can't help but shake my head as I know it's someone who doesn't like something I said on another post and is following me around.
It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO.
The dilemma here is that most people don't want to read petty squabbles. So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive, commenting is likely to devolve into a back-and-forth that earns a pile of downvotes from everyone else.
I realize there's a difference between a single downvote for a post and a series of "punishment" downvotes, but the same idea applies.
It occurs to me that a nice feature for hacker news would be to have a comment box on the user profile page which would allow the equivalent of private messages. That way instead of the alternatives being (a) downvote, (b) public response and sometimes (c) email; you could resolve the conflict with the person via private messages.
So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive
If I think a poster is trolling, I'll ignore him/her. I encourage others to do the same. Trolling is no fun if somebody doesn't take the bait.
If the person doesn't seem to be trolling but is just posting something "stupid and offensive," call him/her out on it and say why. The poster may not realize how "stupid/offensive" the post is. That's the value of this community. You can learn here.
Often, it's really hard to do this without starting a petty meta-argument. It can be hard to call someone out and maintain focus on the topics people actually want to read about.
For example, I have downvoted people for complaining about getting downvotes. Sometimes I explain, if I can do it in a way that I think adds real value to the discussion, but really: it's in the guidelines. Nobody wants to see someone complain about downvotes and then see me complain about the complaining, which can easily start a flamewar. So I downvote and move on.
Another example is prefacing a sentence with "look,". This is almost always condescending and unnecessary in written communication. If I really think people would appreciate an explanation of why this is condescending I will explain, but usually doing that will distract from the real discussion.
Sometimes really lazy posts with blatant logical fallacies and lack of substance get a downvote without a comment. Because really, if there's no substance then what is there to comment about?
It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO.