"In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help others do so."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

And duly they downvoted my "fair" question....

Asking for a non-paywalled link isn’t complaining.

And now they downvote you. The russian nesting dolls of downvotes by the increase of post-covid 19 HN crowd.

When it comes to communities I suppose too much success brings its own form of failure.

This is just an observation of downvotes over the last couple of months for what was once normal commentary, observations or stating facts.

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Especially don't do it three times.

An account from April 2020 shouldn't be making trenchant observations about changes in the nature of the community, either. You just got here.