If you post early you will end up +5/-1. If you post late you comment will be stuck at 1. People tend to vote on what they see first too. So the stuff at the top just ends up +5/-1. It does not really signal anything. The cap SD system only works if the group of people posting/voting is small, the story churn is low, and the votes are hard to come by. Soylent added in a disagree vote which was neutral. Which seemed to help some. But they also added in way more votes per cycle. On that board most of the 'disagree' though ends up with people marking -1 troll. Basically they accidently found people want to punish in some way. When the real vote should have been a disagree 0.
Up/down voting seems to work OK. But only if you have mods willing to mod and not push/punish anything.
But I miss the jokes sometimes. I have to resist the urge to reference Rob Malda when I'm reading HN occasionally.
Without a culture that rejects them, they, by nature, rapidly overwhelm most communities in content if a voting system is present.
"if you insist on taking up my class time making jokes, please see to it that they are funny."