But in a poll or election, there's no general taboo against expressing your redundant opinion. In fact, it's encouraged, to get a complete or representative sample.
And especially when a comment provokes strong opinions, but is already well-expressed, a simple click-vote-with-tally is almost irresistant to people as an outlet. It's quick, it's easy, it doesn't bloat the thread with vertically-expensive 'my thoughts exactly' or 'I couldn't disagree more' one-line replies.
The one downside is that it also affects karma and display position, and thus is likely to generate resentments and competitions. That's what makes it a bit unseemly; 'beating a dead horse' or unneighborly 'piling-on'.
Hence the solution: give people a pure agree/disagree vote separate from mod-up/mod-down.
I know that's your intent, but each wave of new users is only going to pick that up slowly -- if ever.
And it's not just the word 'vote' that's a problem. The UI/functionality doesn't completely support that intent: they're "comments" that can be erased when the next person votes the other way. They're reported like a poll -- a summary number. But downvotes sting more than respectful disagreement, because they imply transgression.
The coarsening of discussion, the anguish over piling-on, the long threads about proper voting, the karmic games -- they're all worsened because the 1-bit message 'this comment is bad' and the 1-bit message 'I disagree' are forced into a single 1-bit channel.
(Forcing "this comment is good" and "I agree" in the same channel isn't problematic the same way, because neither sentiment conveys opprobrium and triggers defensiveness.)
But in a poll or election, there's no general taboo against expressing your redundant opinion. In fact, it's encouraged, to get a complete or representative sample.
And especially when a comment provokes strong opinions, but is already well-expressed, a simple click-vote-with-tally is almost irresistant to people as an outlet. It's quick, it's easy, it doesn't bloat the thread with vertically-expensive 'my thoughts exactly' or 'I couldn't disagree more' one-line replies.
The one downside is that it also affects karma and display position, and thus is likely to generate resentments and competitions. That's what makes it a bit unseemly; 'beating a dead horse' or unneighborly 'piling-on'.
Hence the solution: give people a pure agree/disagree vote separate from mod-up/mod-down.