A score is punishment or reward by consensus. I always thought the reason was psychological. There's a (very difficult to subdue) urge for a lot of people to pu

A score is punishment or reward by consensus. I always thought the reason was psychological. There's a (very difficult to subdue) urge for a lot of people to punish those they disagree with; individual merits of the argument be damned. I've seen it here, and it can't be discounted as just a downvote for tone. I think the wisdom of not being able to downvote someone who has replied to you really shines here (along with Slashdot's more extreme example of killing any mod points on a thread you're participating). It sort of forces you to be more objective before dishing out punishment. The positive distribution may be skewed due to self-censorship to some degree. People tend to look at their score if it's displayed (one of the reasons, I wish "karma" was not shown and instead showed a Slashdot style label score for community standing). There may genuinely be more likable things than unlikable things since scoring of some sort with a very specific number is involved. I'm more inclined to believe the negative review assessment. It is true that most folks just browse away to something more uplifting if the conversation or the story itself has become toxic.