I was always suspicious of the LISP articles. Just kidding.
I think that the lack of down votes for normal people means that you end up seeing a lot of support for some things that are popular with the people who CAN down vote.
Anyone with an account can upvote stories. It's probably a good idea to visit /new to upvote interesting submissions.
Anyone with an account can flag a submission. Flagging should only be used for submissions that violate site guidelines. No-one can downvote a submission.
Anyone with an account can upvote comments. (Click the timestamp to reveal the flag link.) Anyone with an account can flag comments - again flagging should be restricted to comments that violate the guidelines.
People with karma over 750(?) 1000(?) can downvote comments. There's disagreement about when downvotig should be used. Some people feel it should only be used for posts that violate site guidelines[1]; others think that downvote to disagree is okay.
Plenty of people downvote comments because of disagreement. It means that conversations that are contentious disappear...so the subjects popular with the high karma crowd end up being the ones that are seen over and over again.
I'm not trying to be too negative here...I'm just saying. There are days when the number of Go stories is just crazy. It reminds me of the Linux advocacy of the 90's where people seem to think they are doing a great good by posting them.
I realize that it could also just be a very visible indicator of the overall zeitgeist of people using the site. Something tells me this isn't the case, though.
People can downvote comments but not stories. Anyone can upvote stories. So the number of Go articles has nothig to do with downvoting or users with high karma.
When I submitted my Lisp project, it didn't get even a single upvote. Maybe I should've mentioned I wrote it in Lisp to enjoy the grace of this invisible Lisp brigade, but I always felt it's tacky to submit stuff like "X but written in Go/Javascript/whatever!!!" because it basically shows that you're just reinventing the bicycle. The project should stand on its own regardless of the language it's written in.
I think that the lack of down votes for normal people means that you end up seeing a lot of support for some things that are popular with the people who CAN down vote.
Maybe I've got it wrong, but it seems that way.