Since we don't know exactly how people would react to given incentive/risk profiles that would undoubtable differ story to story we can assume two scenarios: -

Since we don't know exactly how people would react to given incentive/risk profiles that would undoubtable differ story to story we can assume two scenarios: - Stories that have perceived "deadlocks" would be considered volatile. They have a great chance of "breaking out" with large support, so they would be voted on early by supporters to reap the reward. - Divisive stories/comments would scare away any voters and eventually only stories that were beneficial to the entire community would be voted on. So in this scenario, this system helps to define the community. edit: Also, the problem that you describe isn't isolated to my system. In the current HN system, people don't comment on stories because they fear that their comment will be "divisive" and attract negative votes. My system encourages voting, which would reward someone for voting on a "-3" comment (that makes it back to 0 or 1) that is beneficial to the conversation.