Ah, ok, that makes a lot more sense. I was imagining removing comments that had been downvoted; not removing the link to downvote.
I generally agree with that, but it reminds me of another problem. The Karma number is now an ever-growing and meaningless figure. I think it should be harder to improve your karma as you get higher, and it should be easier to lose it. That it actually has a meaning.
I'm embarrassed to say that I have accidentally upvoted many times. This always happen on a particularly egregious comment that caused you to be distracted while clicking.
We should not remove down votes outright. I've seen a comment get downvoted to -4 because people didn't like the commentary, but then shoot back up to +10 when it was shown that they were correct after all.
I generally agree with that, but it reminds me of another problem. The Karma number is now an ever-growing and meaningless figure. I think it should be harder to improve your karma as you get higher, and it should be easier to lose it. That it actually has a meaning.