For one, it prevents creating new accounts to downvote someone that pisses you off. For me personally, it means I downvote only for “adds absolutely nothing and is somehow harmful to HN community”. I probably upvote : downvote at 20:1 or greater.
When deciding if a comment voting system is good or bad, I look heavily towards the outcome, and secondarily towards the mechanism. I think outcome on HN is second to none.
- mandatory 60 second re-click to submit a comment, without edits
- mandatory 60 second re-click on votes after a rate threshold is exceeded
- multiple choice votes to express motivation, intention, feedback
- do not publish karma numbers
- publish "example threads" that show values being practiced, including dead links/comments examples
- randomly assign usernames every 12 months
- tags and tag feeds