I comment a lot less on HN than I used to, and a lot of that I think has to do with the change in the community, the tone, something like that. For me I don't care about internet points, but upvotes and downvotes affect how visible your comments end up being in a thread. It seems as though there's a lot less substantive discussion on HN than there used to be. The front page moves faster and people aren't interested in having discussions. It's not a matter of going through the effort of making a post and then being disappointed in being downvoted, or not being upvoted. It's a matter of writing something and then having it ignored, which makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place. Are you just shouting into the void?