Sort:  

Replying here to @smooth

I very much agree. The more freely we express ourselves (in this case by votes) the more the system is informed by a wisdom of crowds effect. In fact there is value to just seeing what is controversial, for example in dating sites it has been shown that a high level of disagreement over attractiveness is a better predictor of who gets the most dates than the aggregate score alone.

Yes, I know what you mean. My point is slightly different. Perhaps it is okay or even better that voters who disagree simply express their individual views rather than decide to engage in a 'collusive scheme' to amplify their vote power by both agreeing to not vote.

No one does that on other sites such as reddit; some people upvote and others downvote, resulting in a net score. While vote power isn't limited there (I think; afaik reddit's current scoring is opaque), attention is.

In fact, having both opposing votes present contains useful information; reddit has a "controversial" ranking which shows content getting both up- and down-votes. Given a healthier downvote economy here, such a thing might be equally useful. I know I'd certainly be interested to see where the disagreements lie.

Individually, yes it would probably be better to agree to not vote and save vote power, but I don't see how this helps the system as a whole.