I've had well-written comments downvoted into oblivion in threads that also included another comment stating the exact same opinion slightly differently. I've had zingy one-liners upvoted to 100 or so. I've had discussions where the back and forth statements alternated between negative and positive karma.
I'm treating it as a study in human behavior around communications. So far my takeaways are:
- a zingy one-liner that agrees with the zeitgeist will be upvoted to the sky
- the same type of comment expressing a contrarian view will be buried
- timing matters: if you get a few downvotes early on, the downvote brigade will help ensure a continued slide
- downvoting to disagree is natural (meme theory and all that). What's interesting to me is how can one overcome the impulse to downvote and potentially seed a new idea in someone's brain.