I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]:
"The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools.
Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and are much less broadly discussed today."
That anodyne observation garnered 5 downvotes. I mean, of course it was silly to treat Linux desktop packaging tools as the most important story in tech in 2023! Overall the dynamic feels like Wikipedia: people who participate are atypical, and nothing annoys them more than one's pointing out that they are atypical.
"The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools. Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and are much less broadly discussed today."
That anodyne observation garnered 5 downvotes. I mean, of course it was silly to treat Linux desktop packaging tools as the most important story in tech in 2023! Overall the dynamic feels like Wikipedia: people who participate are atypical, and nothing annoys them more than one's pointing out that they are atypical.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37211129