Says you. The site's guidelines/FAQ don't give any instruction on their use, and the founder of the site has stated on multiple occasions that he agrees with downvoting to disagree (example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)
(Maybe your way is better, but persuade the mods of that and get the guidelines changed, don't just tell people your way is the way they should be doing it anyway.)
That's pretty strong langauge ("don't just tell people your way is the way"), based on some comment by pg that happened almost ten years ago. The fact is many websites that have down-voting, for example reddit, have issues with users using it for disagreement when it should be primarily used to move comments down that don't help the discussions, or involve rudeness - kind of like your attack.
Note the exact quote: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." (pg)
It appears to imply that the intention is actually for booing rudeness, but, in order to be symmetrical with agreement, it's not only for that. At least this seems to be pg's intention eight years ago, maybe we can grow beyond that. For example, I've seen plenty of down-voting when people are trying to be funny, and the mod telling this people off, because this is not reddit. It all points to wanting a constructive debate, which doesn't work if everybody just agrees.
Maybe I'm just not being sensitive enough, but I don't read my previous comment as being an "attack", nor even rude (maybe a little blunt).
I was (attempting to) point out that a policy such as "don't downvote comments just because you disagree" can only work if either the entire community agrees, or if the people who run the community dictate it. Here on HN, neither of those is the case, therefore while we're all free to follow that guidance if we prefer, posting a comment asking other people to do it isn't going to change much.
Downvoting isn't clearly defined. It is in the eyes of the beholder. A good trigger though is being negative against any of the HN legacies without the appropriate deference.
