[unsupp0rted]

I'm happy to say that even HN largely doesn't work like that: many of us upvote comments with which we disagree because they are well thought-out or interesting, and made us reconsider our viewpoints, even if we ultimately settled on the same viewpoint as before.

Or at minimum we don't downvote as knee-jerk psychological defense mechanism.

And Dang doesn't go around removing comments and commenters he philosophically disagrees with either, even when they're obviously wrong or hyper-emotional, so long as they're not hurting the community.

[carlosjobim]

I think the ability to block/ignore users would be much better than having down votes. If some poster is simply insufferable to a person, better that they have the ability to block than that they silence by downvoting.

And upvoting people you disagree with if they move the discussion forward in a good way is something we all should do, but it is a struggle.