I think it's a pretty lightweight mechanisim that helps guide what is acceptable and what isn't, especially for people coming from other online communities. Su

I think it's a pretty lightweight mechanisim that helps guide what is acceptable and what isn't, especially for people coming from other online communities. Sure sometimes it's used to express dislike for an opposite opinion, but a lot of the time its used on comments of the form "lol, this is so funny". But I will also upvote what I think is a legitimate comment that takes an opposing view even if I don't agree. So hopefully things are reasonably self correcting.