I agree with the parent, I had the same experience, the comments I believe are interesting opinions are only moderately upvoted, while silly jokes get upvoted much more. And especially I don't like when people downvote without leaving comment (contrary argument). If you agree it's obvious why, if you disagree then it's not.

I think the Slashdot system was an interesting one, it had also labels, so there was a difference between "+5 Insightful" and "+5 Funny". It also provided some feedback while downvoting. I think having moderation labels instead of plain points would help moderation.

Actually, users could then customize point cost for each of the labels, so they could see the page differently.