As a person who often catches the "post at 1 after an hour of people battling to push me up and back down again," I echo the sentiment that just showing the number doesn't mean too much. Controversial generally => lost points, whereas I actually believe controversial commenting is the only thing that keeps discussion interesting. Showing how many upvotes/downvotes something has (in addition to the raw score) would be a nice way to indicate controversy at a glance.