[Alexey_Nigin]

From my experience, the votes are rarely a sign of a constructive comment.

For example, my top comment is the one in which I basically said that learning natural languages is hard. Pretty original remark, huh? In my second most popular comment, I posted a link to a funny image that didn't have much to do with the conversation. And my most downvoted comment is a detailed explanation of why I'm not impressed with Twitter's plans to use advanced machine learning.

I am not arguing that we should abolish votes, since I don't see an alternative. But tweaking the existing system to see if it becomes better is a sensible idea.

Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.

[funkyy]

But mostly are. Lets assume 90th percentile rule - 90% of comments below half of the page are worse than comments on upper half of page.

While some comments might be quite good below, if you have limited time and want to be more successful at cutting "crap" you will hover only around top comments. Not a perfect thing, but this is what makes this place different from Reddit - you can be almost sure top comments will be valuable, cleverly funny, starting some interesting thought and not funny image, joke or offensive.

[veddox]

> Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.

True. Which is why I make a point of scrolling down and reading them whenever I can ;-) Often those comments are simply made by people who came late to the discussion and didn't garner as many upvotes as the people who were there first, even though what they had to say was just as (or almost as) good.

[js8]

I think if the votes are to be used to promote constructive discussion, then you need more information about the intent. Just plain good/bad won't cut it.

[z3t4]

i remember a HN parody witch was quite acurate, where u find the thougtful comments at the bottom, maybe even downvoted because someone did disagree. i do however think the hn comments holds supprisingly good quality compared to reddit and other forums.