A Dissenting Comment is just like any other comment in the system except that upvotes for these comments negate the parent. Rewards are not paid to the author of the comment and neither are curation rewards. Instead, the reward shares are negatively applied to the parent, reducing the payout of the post.
The main difference is that reputation is not adversely applied to the post, unlike flags.
Since these are dissenting opinions and not flags, users should be more free to upvote a Dissenting Comment, especially if they agree with the rationale.
If they don't agree with the exact rationale given, they can start their own Dissenting Comment with their own rationale.
Alice loves chickens. She's also a huge whale. So anytime someone posts about chickens, she upvotes them.
Bob doesn't care about chickens. He is also a huge whale. Bob decides to oppose some of the chicken posts.
So Bob writes Dissenting Comments on a few of the chicken posts. He also upvotes his comments a little, so that the payout for these articles gets diminish a bit, which keeps them from trending.
Others see Bob's rationale and decide to upvote or ignore (or perhaps flag) his dissent. By doing so, they are either adding to the weight of the dissent or subtracting from it.
Dave didn't care either way about chicken posts. But Dave sees Bob's rationale and finds that he agrees. So Dave upvotes Bob's Dissenting Comment as well, which further reduces the payout of the parent post.
