As others have said, there is a heuristic flame war detector. It seems that a penalty is applied if an item has more than 40 comments, and fewer points than comments. It's actually a good idea, but it has many false positives.
That said, if people want to comment on something but don't think it's worth upvoting, maybe it really doesn't belong on the front page.
That said, if people want to comment on something but don't think it's worth upvoting, maybe it really doesn't belong on the front page.