We really need to clarify, for everyone, whether a down-vote means 'I disagree' or 'I think you shouldn't have posted this at all'.
I think I heard an excellent answer, somewhere, that suggested that upvotes/downvotes merely represent "I want more people to see this" or "I want less people to see this". This is implied in the system that will reorganize the posts such posts with higher scores will be put in a more conspicuous on the page.
As excellent as that answer is, however, I do wonder if it misses something. As much as we might prefer votes to have a consistent interpretation, I think this bends to the idea that the meaning of a vote on a post depends on the ...
My impression is that critiques of lesswrong mainstream positions and arguments for contrary positions are received well and achieve high karma scores when they are of very high quality. Similarly posts and comments that take lesswrong mainstream positions will still be voted down if they are of very low quality. But in between there seems to be a gulf: Moderately low quality mainstream comments will stay at 0 to -1 karma while contra-mainstream comments of (apparently) similar quality score solidly negative karma, moderately high quality mainstream comments achieve good positive karma while similar quality contra-mainstream comments stay at 0 to 2.
Do you share my impression? And if this is the case, should we try to do something about it?