For this reason I generally don't care about comments at all, except for when comments are negative, as it inhibits the ability to read the comments. I'd actually like to see that practice eliminated, since I find that often comment "gems" have negative karma, but simply take on an unpopular position.
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think you mean "comments which are unpopular here", not bad comments. Also, by saying "extremely highly" you are implying that GP's commment is a bad one? Care to say how?
The comment I replied to ("You're right that ... You can draw your own conclusions from this.") is a bad comment because it contains no interesting content, just whining about "downvotes without replying".
The site guidelines are there for a reason: everyone should follow them.
As it seems to be my job to explain how messed up the voting patterns are on HN, here it is: Comments which express a opinion which people disagree with tend to be downvoted initially, because the first people to read the comments are often much more trigger happy with their downvotes. After that, if a comment puts forth genuinely good points, it tends to be upvoted if enough people see it. There are also some people who reflexively downvote comments which complain about downvoting.
I know how much it sucks to have a comment downvoted with no explanation or responses when the only reason seems to be that it expresses an unpopular opinion, especially when you've spent a lot of time writing it. But a lot of people on HN are calm and rational, and don't downvote comments simply because they disagree with them - hell, it might have just been one person who downvoted you, as that's all it takes to get a comment grayed out. But you're in the positive now, which shows that it averages out, right?