If downvote is like a slap in the face for you then you are taking it much much too serious. And thank's for calling me not being worthy to be intelligent human being.

Update: I will downvote anyone with such stupidly patronizing and passive-aggressive attitude like "if you downvote me (or anyone else) then you are stupid or not worthy". Anyone is free to downvote my comments for any reason they like: be it disagreement, not liking the tone of it, or me being factually wrong. I'd appreciate the correcting comment in the latter case though, but by no means the lack of such I would consider an insult or "slap in the face". I don't think there is any problem with downvoting on HN, but I guess there are problems with some egos.

Look, you can call this a problem with my ego or whatever. I happen to think that there are certain minimum standards of politeness that should be upheld online as well as offline. And for me that includes using words to explain any disagreement instead of just acting in some ambiguous way that can be interpreted as hostile.

You seem to think that downvotes deal with disagreement, or that you should even downvote soemthing you disagree with. Instead, downvoting should exist for comments that provide no value to the discussion of the topic. If you're getting downvoted with no discuss on it, maybe you should reconsider the value of the comment, and see if it really helps spur discussion.

The way a comment is phrased is part of this. Coming off like a rude jerk isn't going to help your cause any. I don't downvote things I disagree with, but I will vote down people who aren't helping create a worthwhile discussion.

Should I respond to these? No, I don't think so. What am I going to say? "You're being a jerk, down vote!" doesn't add anything to the conversation either and would deserve a downvote as well.

You can disagree with this approach, but if you downvote someone and then respond, your saying one of two things:

Your comment instigated further discussion on my part, but I don't want other people to read it, so I will downvote simply because I disagree.

Or...

Your comment isn't helping to further the discussion of this topic, but I'm going to respond anyways by telling and as a result create a comment that also doesn't advance the discussion.

I understand what you're saying, but the problem is that a vast and growing majority of downvotes cannot possibly be interpreted as "this doesn't contribute anything". Votes are being used like they would be used in an election. I'm for or against this. And that's just not good enough in my view.

No, because there is a sensible default interpretation of an upvote, which would be to repeat the statement. There is no such default interpretation of a downvote and that's why a downvote needs an explanation if none has been given so far. A downvote implies a different opinion and I want to know what that opinion is.

Downvoting isn't a slap in my face, but downvoting without telling me why is.

[Edit: You're right that I phrased my parent comment badly]

And by the way, I did not call you "not being worthy to be intelligent human being". Quite the contrary. I implied that you are in fact an intelligent human being and that such behaviour is not worthy of you.