Member Of Species

This isn't the same thing as an upvote if people pay attention to the upvote/downvote ratio as well as the total.

Four voting options: good, bad, not good, not bad.

The advantage of such a system is people don't end up feeling punished when enough people actively think they're harmless.

In theory, but maybe not in practice, legitimately controversial comments would have many "good"/"bad" votes, few "not good"/"not bad".

Whereas merely bland comments would get many "not good"/"not bad" votes and remain hopelessly stuck at a score of zero.

Starting these comments at -1 would mildly disincentivize chaff without making people feel rejected or attacked by a concrete person.

Just to be clear, in this system, goodness would just show as 0 until more voters said "good" than "not good". Same with badness.

Potential issue: if badness is psychologically stronger than goodness, maybe people will strategically vote "not bad" instead of "good".