I think think the upvote concept has merit but I agree, it's flawed by votes for popular stories just because they're popular.
In order to avoid the groupthink problem a simple solution might be to hide the number of votes an article has received until you've voted either up or down/neutral. Obviously without a visible vote count you could still tell an article was doing well by its position on the site, but without the number of votes visible, there would be less of a tendency to vote something up just because everybody else is doing it.
In order to avoid the groupthink problem a simple solution might be to hide the number of votes an article has received until you've voted either up or down/neutral. Obviously without a visible vote count you could still tell an article was doing well by its position on the site, but without the number of votes visible, there would be less of a tendency to vote something up just because everybody else is doing it.