Never said you can downvote a reply, but this gives more privileges to the silent downvoters as they keep downvoting and waiting others do the work and keep downvoting. I know this as in most cases, my unpopular comments get the same negative score (well, usually having -4, to be fair). I've seen some cowards who delete their comments when they start getting downvotes, which breaks the discussion as well and makes the replies out-of-context.
How can a -4 comment be "noise" if there are tons of replies? I often have a root comment with -4 and then tens and at times hundreds of comments underneath?
The comment regime on HN is broken. Down voting is anonymous & carries zero social cost. The fact of a homogenous karma space is a contributing factor: user x /may/ have gained karma points based on input on subject matters that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
And I agree with you regarding the real world karma consequences of this for HN :)
HN is very important, but it is also greatly neglected. I'm not sure if the goal is not to compete with some of the startups or if Paul Graham has some future plans about it. Unfortunately, due to loyalty, people keep sticking in here even if better alternatives pop up from time to time. Some of those being Lobsters [0] and Monocle [1].
