In the first thread it was mentioned several times that people voted for posts to give them what they felt was a good score, not as a +1/-1/0, but to give them

In the first thread it was mentioned several times that people voted for posts to give them what they felt was a good score, not as a +1/-1/0, but to give them a specific score. For example, I have a fairly reasonable idea of a 1 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848274 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848274), 5 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848482 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848482), and 10 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848201 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848201) point posts (note, these were just chosen fairly quickly off of the front page items, not trying to call anyone out for anything). Generally, I won't down vote people unless they are approaching the next group up when I don't think they deserve it, and will upvote if they are lower than I feel the post deserves. I know several other people mentioned feeling the same way, and it seems like there are far more people who felt that way and refrained from voting on most comments precisely because of that (at least if the jump in comment scores on my posts are indicative of the scoring in general).