I don't think it really implies that. Not outside of any idealized world anyway.
A few things are going on:
* Highly visible posts (on HN, you can get visibility early on by making top level posts. Very recent top level posts tend to be displayed at the top of the page) will receive more votes, up or down, than posts which are less visible.
* Votes are crude. I might see two comments which I think are good, and vote both of them up. But what if I thought one of those comments was not merely good, but excellent? I cannot communicate that to HN without either neglecting to upvote the merely good comment, or by 'strategically' downvoting the good comment.
Combine these and a good top level comment refuting a comment will likely receive more upvotes than a superb child comment refuting a comment, even if each individual reader in the thread would say that they preferred the child comment. Vote counts, despite appearing democratic from 1000', do not necessarily illustrate the will of the readers.
There is a third thing going on too:
* People love online drama and arguments.
Exhibit A would be Reddit's 'subreddit drama' subreddit, which does nothing but link to arguments on reddit for the amusement of the subscribers. Because of this, posts that are confrontational or take unnecessarily strong stances and indict large vaguely defined groups of people will rake in the upvotes. Maybe that is what HN readers want, but should that be what HN gives them? If the site ran itself as a pure democracy with no guidelines or moderator assisted shaping, it would all just be image macros and pictures of pets.
A few things are going on:
* Highly visible posts (on HN, you can get visibility early on by making top level posts. Very recent top level posts tend to be displayed at the top of the page) will receive more votes, up or down, than posts which are less visible.
* Votes are crude. I might see two comments which I think are good, and vote both of them up. But what if I thought one of those comments was not merely good, but excellent? I cannot communicate that to HN without either neglecting to upvote the merely good comment, or by 'strategically' downvoting the good comment.
Combine these and a good top level comment refuting a comment will likely receive more upvotes than a superb child comment refuting a comment, even if each individual reader in the thread would say that they preferred the child comment. Vote counts, despite appearing democratic from 1000', do not necessarily illustrate the will of the readers.
There is a third thing going on too:
* People love online drama and arguments.
Exhibit A would be Reddit's 'subreddit drama' subreddit, which does nothing but link to arguments on reddit for the amusement of the subscribers. Because of this, posts that are confrontational or take unnecessarily strong stances and indict large vaguely defined groups of people will rake in the upvotes. Maybe that is what HN readers want, but should that be what HN gives them? If the site ran itself as a pure democracy with no guidelines or moderator assisted shaping, it would all just be image macros and pictures of pets.