One thing to keep in mind is that people who are judicious in their use of upvotes/downvotes are going to have much less impact than those who haphazardly upvot

One thing to keep in mind is that people who are judicious in their use of upvotes/downvotes are going to have much less impact than those who haphazardly upvote/downvote. Such is the nature of giving people limitless votes (and comments, for that matter). Platforms like this (and Reddit, and a large portion of social media) are structured in such a way that they give an outsized voice if people behave in a way most would find problematic. Another issue is that places like HN and Reddit only show the total score, and not the upvote/downvote breakdown. I saw a topic here where all the comments on one side were downvoted and grayed out, but when someone put up a poll asking for the opinions that side got about 40%. It's hard to know if a greyed out comment is because the community as a whole feels the comment is bad, or if it's simply in an emotionally charged discussion where the opposition has a slight majority.