[pvg]

The emotional dynamic in downvoting is very strong.c

Have you lot thought much about ways of reducing that, without changing the effect votes have on ordering? I subscribe to the 'emotional dynamic' theory of this and it seems like it's empirically testable without fiddling with the way the site much.

[dang]

How would you reduce it?

[tptacek]

You've already done some things to reduce it; for instance, by not greying out your own comments when you've been downvoted. Since comment scores have lots of jitter, you could also smooth out the displayed score, or delay updates. There's almost no time-value to comment scores, but I'd bet most of the pain in a downvote is confined to ~15 minutes from the posting of the comment.

[pvg]

Just the obvious stuff - you've already done things like that for upvotes. If we stipulate that having a grey, minus-y comment is some heavy public shaming shit to lay on users, it seems reasonable to try to apply it more judiciously. Are there really five distinct levels comment badness, each with a specific level of illegibility that the poster, let alone everyone else needs to know about? Is a +0-2=-2 comment, or a +20-22=-2 comment really terrible enough for sitewide opprobrium? What would happen if comments just sat at 1 until they hit -4 or below? Or if, for the purposes of display, everyone started with an invisible bonus of N? Theese and similar seem simple (like all work to be done by others) to try without as much as telling anyone.