Up and downvoting on HN works in mysterious ways. I don't think there are botnets voting. If there are, they are spending their time upvoting content. My theory is that HN has an "anger management" feature. That is, if a user is posting comments that others down vote, the system assumes that the user is "angry" and automatically penalizes their subsequent comments. Feel free to down vote and flag this comment so that I can test my theory.