if you can’t downvote in private, how are the poor lurkers supposed to get involved? Lurkers don’t comment because they want to stay invisible. Now they won’t even be able to vote! man, that’s gonna sting some people

But it’s already possible. If you review this OP on a Kbin instance, you’ll see who upvoted the comment with most upvotes.

Not integrating it means you give the impression to users it’s not public information. But it is public.