On [Coinbase's announcement yesterday][1], I was concerned that the top 14 root-level comments were all focusing on the security implications of the announcemen

On [Coinbase's announcement yesterday][1], I was concerned that the top 14 root-level comments were all focusing on the security implications of the announcement; it was as if there was nothing else to discuss other than that. In many other discussions it seems like one controversial sub-topic ends up dominating as well. Perhaps downvoting controversial comments isn't always a bad thing? There seems to be a big fear of the downvote button, but in some cases, even if a comment is useful on its own, in the end it sparks massive amounts of arguing back and forth which could be avoided if it were just downvoted instead. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703443 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703443