Why not have a meta discussion like a Wikipedia Talk page so comments like these would have room and critique won't be shut down.
Yesterday (you can look in my comment history) I ran into a situation where the person doing the down-voting turned out to be basing it on their opinion not fact (after they finally stated their opinion on the matter, which contradicts peer-reviewed research on the topic, I realized why they were down voting: insufficient depth of understanding of the topic) and no one came after them to correct the situation...
Either have people explain why they down-voted or have a Talk page where people can discuss their reasons, complain, etc, behind the scene.
HN is a site for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and a meta forum would be a step away from that. It would fill up with litigious bickering and nitpicking, and demands for bureaucratic administration—all things that intellectually curious discussion requires having the restraint to avoid.
Edit: and it's for similar reasons that we don't publish a moderation log.
Yesterday (you can look in my comment history) I ran into a situation where the person doing the down-voting turned out to be basing it on their opinion not fact (after they finally stated their opinion on the matter, which contradicts peer-reviewed research on the topic, I realized why they were down voting: insufficient depth of understanding of the topic) and no one came after them to correct the situation...
Either have people explain why they down-voted or have a Talk page where people can discuss their reasons, complain, etc, behind the scene.