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If people don't agree, then clearly it doesn't have much value to them. And that's part of what the rating is intended to measure. There's no objective "good post" – there are "good opinions" and "good ways of expression" (both relative, but the latter may have more common ground).

Similarly, there's no "right" way to weigh opinion vs. expression. What you can't see, which I looked up yesterday, is the distribution of votes given. Surprise: it's all over the board. Some people have a very clear bimodal distribution, while for others it's closer to a normal distribution – and the mean can vary from around 2.5 stars to 4. Both factors reflect differing voting philosophies.

As for the distribution of received votes, that probably depends on how opinionated your comments are. If you frequently express strong opinions, people will tend to agree or disagree with your comments based on that. Some such comments may be hidden entirely. More frequently, reasonably-expressed but unpopular opinions are faded; hinting at the reception, but still there to be read. It's not the all-or-nothing situation you imply.

The breakpoints were chosen with reference to our historical debates, so as to make it easy to fold posts which nobody credits, but harder if readers are saying "I don't agree, but at least you're arguing well".

I doubt we're going to come to an agreement here, because we seem to fundamentally disagree over the extent to which it's OK to decrease the visibility of expressions of opinion which most people don't agree with.

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