We're looking for a discussion, not a knee jerk reaction to down vote things just because you disagree. But opinions get buried yet not a single person talks. What the point of a forum if no one comments?
So, the issue with this is that for the first part this would require quite a bit of development which may be out of scope of the development currently going on. Not to say it's impossible, just that it is a different change than what's currently being worked on.
The other issue is that many times, especially once a thread gains traction, someone's already said everything you need to say. You would have many spam comments of "same" where they could've just voted in the current system. If someone thinks a post is well written and deserves an upvote, they should not need to comment just to do so.
If we want to make discussion the most important thing and remove the knee-jerk reactionary nature, the thing that should be done is remove the voting. That way opinions are not buried by being one that just simply causes reaction against positions.
