> There's a difference between downvoting a +10 comment down to +9 out of disagreement and downvoting a +! comment down to 0 out of disagreement. I suspect tha

> There's a difference between downvoting a +10 comment down to +9 out of disagreement and downvoting a +! comment down to 0 out of disagreement. I suspect that most people read once or twice a day so the difference between voting when something is +10 and +1 is when they see an article relative to its posting time. In other words, most folks aren't looking for "close" votes to affect. Besides, who's to say that +10 to +9 is actually different from +1 to 0? The score just tells you the difference between up and down votes. It doesn't tell you that the +10 was 10-0 while the +1 was 100-99. Do you really want to argue that a downvote is inappropriate in the latter case? I think that public scores are arguably a mistake because folks read far too much into them. Someone didn't like something - get over it. That said, I think that scores should be hidden except when they get "close". Or, maybe they should disappear if you vote "too much".