I am sure that you cannot back with any credible evidence the assumption than downvoting comments makes HN a better place. You can add flagging and that will do better, but downvoting is unhealthy. The fixed -4 threshold is random and wrong as well. The loyalty to Paul Graham's original decisions is misunderstood loyalty and there are a lot of missed opportunities here, because of these repeated mistakes.
Yes, I know who he is. Although I had a much older account, which password I couldn't recover, because it's from the days when no email was necessary here, I frequent HN for years and that's why I care about this community as I spend a significant portion of my life in here.
We can sometimes help people regain old accounts with no email address in them. If you still want it, you're welcome to email us (hn@ycombinator.com) with the username and we'll look into it.
