Speculation: there is an authority metric which is used as a strong quality indicator. If you're considered an authority then your vote counts a lot more.
7 votes from folks like patio11 counts for about a million votes by the likes of me.
What amazes me is that as much as I read HN, there are still people in the top 10 whose comments and submissions I've never seen. I wonder if they got all their karma years ago and it's taking this long for everyone else to catch up.
To be fair, some of them mostly submit stories (compare e.g. tptacek and fogus; the first has lots of comments but few stories, the other is the other way round.)
That's almost exactly what I'm not interested in. There are some very interesting people with account who post very infrequently, but their comments, in the context of who they are, is very interesting indeed.
I'm wondering also if some who down vote get a bigger down vote ratio. usually i lose points 1 by 1 and sometimes i just reload and lose 10 or more. Or that's cache. ;-)
And yeah I've strong opinions so while sometimes i get crazy upvotes I also get crazy downvotes hehe.
7 votes from folks like patio11 counts for about a million votes by the likes of me.
Like I said, speculation.