> The problem is, let's say you have an issue where the community is 60% 'opposed' and 40% 'for'. going against the grain means you will always have a net-negative vote count.

No, it doesn't. Numerous threads on hotly contested issues have substantive comments taking opposing sides and neither having net-negative scores.

They also tend to have unsubstantiated comments on opposing sides, both sides having negative scores. Popularity of the idea presented probably has some contribution to score, but it's not the dominant factor by a long shot.

I just think most of the community is well aware that downvotes are not for 'opposition', but rather for things that do not contribute to discussion.

Then again, I am totally speculating.

But there are still people who use it as "I disagree" button, and even those who use it as a retaliation of sorts (I was (still am?) targeted by such an individual; sadly, HN's contact mail is hosted on Gmail, which likes to mark smaller servers as spam, so my contact try never got a response).

Why do you care about votes [whether up, down, or sideways]?

At the end of the day it's only people being "wrong on the internet"

The fastest way to get down voted is to reply to any post which is even slightly political with anything other than a leftist bent. (^:

In my opinion, down voting should require responding. If something is worthy of a down vote then surely it worthy of rebuttal as well.

I feel this oft-repeated argument is a canard, whose strength is mostly from its repetition. One sign of such things is hyperbole such as "even slightly", "anything other than'. Hyperbole, to me, is a substitute for a lack of substantive argument. I recently posted something that is 'leftist' and I think it's down to -4 (which is fine).

I'd look at it serious if there was some data, however.

EDIT: De-inflammatorization