Yeah no shit sherlock when you have a community of millions of people obviously a part of it is going to be toxic.

Here is my response. I think the community tends to like posts that are novel and/or have effort put into them, and dislike those that aren't. For example, most of us don't like the endless AI slop extensions or tutorial blogs, since they typically aren't useful, don't have a lot of effort put in, and typically are reskinned versions of resources that are already available. I think random celebrations also typically fall into the "bad" category, unless they are genuinely unique (like hitting GM, winning IOI, etc., or at least including something that is more meaningful than just another "wow I hit specialist!"). (Is this ratist? Somewhat. Although for the record I did post one about me getting 2700 perf in a div2 and it did get downvoted lol)

In general, I don't often see negative voted posts that I think should be positive or positive voted posts that should be negative, but of course this is biased.

It may be somewhat snobby to say this, but I think the posts that are interesting and I've put genuine effort into, while the more shitposty posts (and I guess controversial ones, lol) seem to be downvoted more.

Regarding this comment that I believe was the reason this post was made, I think the reason it was downvoted is that I (and probably most other people), didn't understand it. Yes, we all are used to the 17:35 start time, but how did that lead to you missing the contest because you thought it was at 20:35? The unusual start time is also bolded in the announcement and mentioned in the comments, so some people may think the comment is just like some random complaint. I don't think most people like reading comments that read like "I hated this contest" (unless it was genuinely bad lol).

Furthermore, at the risk of sounding a bit snobby, people with normal ratings do somewhat dominate the vote counts. As of today, there are around 1,750 active orange+'s, and at 8 votes each for oranges and 10 votes each for GMs, that's 14-17k votes. There are around 20,000 active CMs/experts/specialists, and at 1 vote each (very conservative), that's 20k.

As a final note, directed to everyone else — people will notice how you respond to negativity. If you get downvoted and start complaining, you will typically end up with more downvotes. If you remain as civil as possible, I think that will make your comments more well-received. I hate to self-promote again (I honestly am not good at this), but here's an example.