I have the downvote button :) while I wouldn't have downvited the parent comment, I understood why he was. The comments are what separates HN from other sites in my opinion. A "relevant:" comic comment doesn't do much to advance the discussion, its just noise in the thread -- this is of course simply my opinion.
Linking a comment, and linking a journal article are two very different actions. I wouldn't downvote someone who linked to a journal article, but that's still kind of a crappy comment. Give a summary of why you're linking to the article, not a chore for us to try and figure out what kind of point the commenter is attempting to make.
The fear is that without moderation, the reddit-ification of the comments will continue its steady march forward. Hence, down voting comments which don't add much
>Give a summary of why you're linking to the article,
To me, one of the great things about HN is that someone can post a link without comment, and I can click that link without too much fear of being rickrolled, goatse'd, or some other mental equivalent. In this case, if I wasn't interested in looking at a cartoon, I could decide to close the tab in about the time it takes to read the poster's summary.
Linking a comment, and linking a journal article are two very different actions. I wouldn't downvote someone who linked to a journal article, but that's still kind of a crappy comment. Give a summary of why you're linking to the article, not a chore for us to try and figure out what kind of point the commenter is attempting to make.
The fear is that without moderation, the reddit-ification of the comments will continue its steady march forward. Hence, down voting comments which don't add much