Ask HN: Do I need a network of friends to make a post to the frontpage?

I'm a long time reader of HN, and have recently tried to contribute to it. I do not have a network of friends in HN, or any other social networks. I do not have any colleagues or coworkers who I can send a message to vote for my posts.

To make this worse, I do not know how to ask people who have the permission to down vote to not give me negative points just because they have a different view to me.

It seems here is no different to reddit, or digg (RIP). I see some low quality links which make the frontpage easily, and I see some very good links in the new page buried by negative points before they were born.

This is disappointing as I had a brighter impression of the HN community.

The logic of the HN web app is far from great. I had to leave my old account because it was stuck with negative points. For a long time I didn't know that my links and comments won't be visible to anyone but me due to the negative points.