In an ideal community people would up-vote arguments
for adding value to the conversation and down-vote only
for detracting. I’d much rather see something well-reasoned
and well-stated that I disagree with than just another
guy confirming my own opinion about something. That puts me
square in the minority on Hacker News and, to be fair, probably
just about any site with voting.
Yet it seems that stating that you wish people would vote on merit puts you in the majority of people who comment on voting systems.
If fewer people said that they wanted voting to work this way, and instead actually voted this way... we'd all have the kind of site we wanted.
There's always the fear of unilaterally disarming: "I am going to vote based on skill, not based on Which Side the person is on. . . . Oh, but everyone else is voting based on Which Side! Now I have to help My Side!"
It's very common to see the Written Rule be "vote based on skill, not viewpoint" and the Practiced Rule be the opposite, with occasional weak exhortations from the mods to follow the Written Rule which may never have been followed.
I do not know how to fix this or if it is fixable.
If fewer people said that they wanted voting to work this way, and instead actually voted this way... we'd all have the kind of site we wanted.