I've seen plenty of downvotes around from people who didn't understand what was being said/wanting to exert opinions. To be honest, that partly gets me to just not want to contribute thoughts since they may be unpopular/do not jive with a hive mentality, and has gotten me to visit the site less for the comments, especially with the recent tweaks.

It'd be nice if something could be figured out to discourage this behavior through reduction of the value of the downvotes of such, especially if a comment has not had a response to explain the downvote.