I think you have misunderstood what what I was trying to say. I was explaining why posts like this with seemingly little information density, redundant "congratulations" comments and low relevance to probably majority of HN users pops up at top. Yes, I've found raganwald's articles and comments insightful more than one occasions. However I've little interest in what color of pajama he wears in night or what flavor of ice-cream he likes. That's what Facebook is for. And there is a reason I haven't checked my Facebook "frontpage" in month. I think of HN as community of like-minded people who likes to share relevant insightful information. I do not have any judgement on what this "like-minded" means or what "relevant insightful information" should include. If some community member in leaderboard started having secret extra marital affair, should it be on frontpage of HN? I think it should be left to community to decide. What I was trying to say is that lack of downvote button disables community to make this decision. When you have only upvote button, a small group of people can collude (knowingly or unknowingly) to push anything at the top very easily whether it reflects the general sentiment in community or not. I'm still not proposing HN should starting having downvote button. As a machine learning guy, I'm endlessly fascinated with collaborative filtering and this is interesting case for me how lack of downvote/dislike/negative ratings impacts relevance.
The lack of a downvote button doesn't imply that everyone would downvote the things you don't don't care about. I don't know him except through Twitter and HN, but I care about his new job and upvoted the article. "But you're just one data point!" So are you.
