A user will only be facing warnings or restrictions if their comment violates our Terms of Service (such comments should be reported, downvoting them doesn't have the same effect). So, to answer your question, it's the latter: "simply a way of knowing which comments are generally disliked vs. which comments are helpful/useful". 
Why downvote comments?
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Oct 25, 2022
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Oct 25, 2022
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It's on the honor system, so in that sense you can safely put more stock in the upvotes than the downvotes. The former are people telling you good job / good idea / etc, and the downvotes are the result of anger, which is obviously not a moment of clearheaded-ness.
That's just one context, I guess. There's also times when the anger is on your side, and that -10 is a fairly good indicator that you should delete your comment, since it's unlikely that that many people are just venting.
It's the kind of system that's been keeping Reddit from imploding for many years. Over there, however, it's tied in to a score. Each vote affects that.
If you want your name attached to the vote, you can hover under the comment and click like instead.
lol, reddit imploding is a good one. Do the upvotes or down votes actually have any affect??
haha
Is there any sort of penalty that comes from having written a comment that gets downvoted a lot, or is downvoting simply a way of knowing which comments are generally disliked vs. which comments are helpful/useful? I was just wondering but I do know that comments that have 10+ downvotes become faded (whatever that does/means).