If plentiful downvoting is allowed, discourse becomes a popularity contest. Fortunately most of the experienced users here seem to understand this and reserve their downvotes for appropriate situations.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, quality posts are almost always downvoted immediately. (I assume it's by self-promoters hoping that it will cause their content to rise in the rankings.)
Hiding posts scores has helped with bandwagoning, but I wish the two options were "upvote" and "report to mods."
This to me seems like the best approach.
A) It would be nice if the mods had a way to flag the post to make it require additional work to see on most / default clients.
B) If multiple mods sign off on a given post being a poor match for constructive discourse that is when most clients wouldn't even display the existence without a special viewing mode or preference. (This assumes an append / write-only forum.)
C) For all USERS, it would be nice if a special type of reply allowed for a post to be a "contrasting viewpoint", which might get displayed at the same node-level as the post being replied to, as part of a package of tightly related views on a topic.
Comments that hit -1 can still recover. Comments rarely recover after -3 or so. The only counter is for the commenter to edit and call out readers for frivolous downvoting.
I never delete posts simply because they are unpopular. In my personal view, that's a coward's move. It tells me that the user doesn't really have any actual conviction, doesn't really believe in what they're saying. If being popular is more important to that person than being correct, then I find their opinion worthless. Because apparently it can be dictated by popular opinion. And I mean actually correct, not just "winning the argument".
I also dislike people who double reply or who use the edit feature to essentially pull an "and another thing". Living out the l'esprit d'escalier fantasy essentially.
Also people who proclaim they won't be responding or tell others not to respond. It's a poor rhetorical tactic to silence opposition because you don't have a good response.
Still, kudos for standing by an unpopular but correct statement in that instance. And kudos to the person who gave you gold for it.
That usually earns a downvote from me. People commenting on downvotes is boring and usually shows a lack of insight, for example obviously making zero effort to understand why their comment is poorly received, or blaming a conspiracy, or blaming groupthink. I have occasionally answered “why the downvotes” questions, but it usually feels like a waste of my time to do so.