I don't know. I'm quite green here too. I don't usually read heavily downvoted comments, as they're hidden by default. Downvoted comments are less visible anyway, so any meta-gaming on them has less meaningful impact.

I might upvote a downvoted comment, if I don't understand why it's downvoted and wanted it to be more visible so that discussion would continue. It would be a good to follow up with a comment to clarify that, but many times I'm too lazy :(

I think making the system more complicated would just make people go even more meta.