Are you sure you are being voted down like you claim ?
In my experience HN'ers are quite restrained in their downvotes. Apart from a few of your comments in this thread that got downvoted I don't see any major downvoting trend going on.
And about those comments: I do not have the karma to downvote anyone and I haven't till before this thread felt the need for such rights. But some of your comments did come off as immature and needlessly argumentative, to the point of refusing to listen to what everyone is saying to you and blaming everything on being a newbie.
when you have zeros next to your post and when you are watching your karma go up and down as much as 5 points, depending on when you posted, then your are being voted. down. Only reason I am being voted down if because someone or a few think I am here for other reason beside just wanting to get may startup going and just trying to figure it all out. Just leave me alone already.
YOU can have the categories in the drop down of "New" post link. You can a have "view all" as an option as well.
You can have the category fields as a requirement when filling out the submission form.
I hope the PTB of HN consider this.
wow even this post is getting voted down already. HMMM