It takes awhile before people gain the ability to downvote, so an aggregate vote of 1 does not imply a 50% split. There is a bias toward positive vote totals, s

It takes awhile before people gain the ability to downvote, so an aggregate vote of 1 does not imply a 50% split. There is a bias toward positive vote totals, since people can upvote but not downvote when they join Hacker News. On any thread there are more people who can upvote than downvote. It would be useful if Hacker News would either make a magnitude number available or the actual up and down votes. A comment that gets 3 upvotes versus 2 downvotes will have the same total as a comment that has 412 upvotes versus 411 downvotes, but clearly one comment was ignored while the other struck a nerve.