I think there needs to be a more substantial karma gate to downvoting (10 000+), I'd be fine with falling out of that category myself. I've only been interacting on HN for the past year or so, but lurked for several years prior: the community has been becoming a lot more "redditish."
I nearly always agree or can be convinced by the higher karma users, but the fresh users seem to be defaulting to reddit-level arguments (uneducated, immutable beliefs, hyperbole, taking things personally, no objectivity). I.e.
> just that everyone who doesn't run a mail server hasn't had to deal with this shit
"Everyone" in that sentence should not have the right to be downvoting in the first place.
For the record, I downvoted you for bringing up the "HN is becoming Reddit" meme, which is something I've seen popping up here all too often for the last 4.6 years I'm participating in HN community (and from what I heard, it happened long before then too) - and yet for all those years of "becoming Reddit" HN still did not become it.
Also, Reddit is cool, and there's ton of quality discussions - usually under particular subreddits. For example, I love /r/KerbalSpaceProgram for a perfect combination of being large, friendly, fun, and full of people willing to teach each other some more advanced science.
To address your point: I think current downvote gate is fine and adjusting it up won't really help much. What would help (though I don't know how to achieve that) is people realizing that when saying anything controversial, you might end up getting a bunch of downvotes immediately, but the score usually settles to a reasonable value within an hour or two. It takes time, but one just has to get used to it.
TL;DR: karma comes and goes; look at it through a low-pass filter, to filter small variations.
I nearly always agree or can be convinced by the higher karma users, but the fresh users seem to be defaulting to reddit-level arguments (uneducated, immutable beliefs, hyperbole, taking things personally, no objectivity). I.e.
> just that everyone who doesn't run a mail server hasn't had to deal with this shit
"Everyone" in that sentence should not have the right to be downvoting in the first place.