I'm aware of that. And indeed we don't get the massive dogpiles on bad ideas that we used to, or I'd expect downvoting to increase their visibility. But the argument from vote totals still seems to apply.
Probably applies better to downvoted comments than to top-level posts, though. It's much easier to expand a collapsed comment thread than to notice the presence of a post that's been voted off the sidebars, and while curiosity might be a motive for the former I don't think it's sufficient for the latter.
But the argument from vote totals still seems to apply
I am not sure -- you have an unobservable characteristic of a post, let's call it propensity to elicit replies. It is likely to be correlated with how controversial the post is. A controversial post is likely to get both many replies and many downvotes (as well as many upvotes). On the other hand a milquetoast post will get neither replies nor downvotes.
My stupid fanfic chapter was banned without explanation so I reposted it; somehow it was at +7 when it was deleted and I think silently deleting upvoted posts is a disservice to LessWrong. I requested that a justification be given in the comments if it were to be deleted again, so LessWrong readers could consider whether or not that justification is aligned with what they want from LessWrong. Also I would like to make clear that this fanfic is primarily a medium for explaining some ideas that people on LessWrong often ask me about; that it is also a lighthearted critique of Yudkowskyanism is secondary, and if need be I will change the premise so that the medium doesn't drown out the message. But really, I wouldn't think a lighthearted parody of a lighthearted parody would cause such offense.
The original post has been unbanned and can be found here, so I've edited this post to just be about the banning.