If you gather a bunch of crazies and give them voting buttons, the result will still be crazy. If you take away voting buttons from sensible people, the discussion will still be sensible.

The problem isn't that the voting promotes group-think. It's the entire premise of voting that is skewed. Once every while you can find a comment here, downvoted to oblivion, simply for stating an unpopular opinion. Before the issue of group-think comes into mind, you'd have to wonder what the down-voters are thinking, and further, how the way they think influences the overall discussion here.

I agree. It's happened to me a few times. Unfortunately, you can't force people into voting based on the "quality" of an opinion over their moral, ethical, or personal regard for that opinion. All you can really do is hope there are more free-thinkers than drones.

But the second time I didn't bother (even though I basically made the same comment further up the page - on a slightly different slant/discussion) and it got upvoted.

It always comes down to the users and their whims in the end :P

This place is a lot better than most :D