This is a straight-forward moan about how HN is going to hell in a handcart. If you don't care about the HN community, or you object to meta, stop reading.
Still here? OK.
When I make a comment on HN I'm about anal about seeing the response it gets. I care about whether things are perceived to be useful. I want to be useful, and helpful, and generally make things better. Really, I do.
I take time to give feedback, and look at the articles before voting on them, and I upvote people who I think are doing good things.
So I noticed that the parent comment to this got a couple of upvotes, and then got a downvote.
Why did it get a downvote? That's something I really don't get. I asked a genuine, pointed and specific question about the service. I asked for a specific improvement to the information being given. I provided a clear example of someone who doesn't get it, so the service providers can make a decision about answering my questions, improving the site so the question doesn't arise, or ignoring me as being in the tail and not worth worrying about. That would be a business decision that I would respect - I'm often the customer that gets ignored, because I'm not normal.
So why the downvote?
I don't care about the karma, except in so far as it's an indication of the cohesion of the "community". What's becoming clear to me is that there really is no longer a proper community here on HN.
It was a comfortable village - it's now an impersonal city.
Whether the quality is going up or down, or whether the general atmosphere is becoming more snarky or not, these are side effects.
The community is gone, and HN is something else.
And that's a shame.