Yeah, I know. The underlying problem is the same. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about how to fix it. I wonder if it would work to normalize votes based on how far down the page a comment is. God would that complicate the code though.
Could we also have a communal "hide posts by this user" feature? Over time the aggregate data would be useful to detect who is like this - especially if we can select a reason for hiding a user.
One of my suggestions to solve the mean-dumb-upvoted comment problem:
if a comment is truly so mean or dumb that the moderators choose to kill it, allow them the option of applying a karma penalty to anyone who upvoted it (which should come with an automated warning message so people know why their karma suddenly dropped). It's, in a sense, a way of voting on votes.
People might still upvote such comments, but at least then they'll know they're taking a risk by violating HN standards.
Interestingly enough, in this case that would have worked. If you only counted the votes of the oldest accounts, the comment in question would have had negative points.
