[kburn]

> It seems to me that someone thin-skinned enough to cease posting his opinions because his comments get downvoted (rather than reconsidering how he comments and seeing if he can improve how he comments) might be just as discouraged from posting minority opinions if he sees a lot of replies that disagree with him.

I respectfully disagree. A downmod supplies almost zero feedback to the recipient. Many posts I've seen with negative mod scores are complex and have a number of topics in them. A downvote at no time explains what precisely was wrong with the post.

It's like a presidential candidate not getting a vote, he doesn't know what part of his platform lost him the vote, just that he didn't get it.

In real life a candidate can pay for a poll and find out why, here it seems that asking why immediately results in more downmods.

(I admit the analogy is imperfect, but hopefully you see where I'm trying to go with it).