/bestcomments (or whatever name may become in the future) had a drawback, I believe. Technically speaking (and generally), the comments in this section are the ones that belong to stories from /best (or highest-upvoted). These stories obviously get more exposure and attention, so their top comments get more upvotes. For instance, a story with 2,000 points might have a comment with 200 points (which is tenth the score of its parent story) that will obviously hit the /bestcomments, while a comment of, say, 50 points on a 150-point story (which is a third) may never have the chance to hit /bestcomments.. Just some thoughts about my daily social network :)
There is probably some sweet spot of n between 0.5 and 2, but not near 1, such that the quotient of comment score^n and thread score^n gives good results.
We do in fact have down votes, you just need 500 (I think?) karma to be able to use it. When you see comments that are not "dead" but are greyed out, they've been downvoted more than they've been upvoted.
It's always irritated me but I haven't changed it, out of deference to history and lack of a pithy alternate name. Anyone?
Maybe /up and /upcomments?