Not taking it personally - however it is demoralizing - and therefore discouraging. Take as a truly hypothetical situation that a commenter came out as gay in

Not taking it personally - however it is demoralizing - and therefore discouraging. Take as a truly hypothetical situation that a commenter came out as gay in a comment and that comment got downvoted so that it appears greyed out and had a negative number next to it. Would that be welcoming? That's what I'm suggesting is negative, it's unnecessary to have a system that actively discourages people because someone doesn't agree with them. And don't forget not all of us (and I am an active HN user) can downvote. So we get a skewed view of people's comments. Simple accountability (i.e. the reason for downvoting) would cure this. If people disagree with a comment they simply won't vote for it, and will upvote a comment they agree with. That's why I feel it's unnecessary to have downvoting by opinion. IMHO - of course :-)