here's another point to consider, since the debate is open again.
I just counted how many replies there are to each comment on this page and this is the result:
21 replies: 1 thread (main thread)
13 replies: 1 thread
6 replies: 1 thread
5 replies: 1 thread
3 replies: 1 thread
2 replies: 8 threads
1 reply: 39 threads
That means the 39 comments that are the only comment in a thread I have no idea whether they're good or bad, save my own judgement. The threads that have 2 replies don't fare much better: Since there's weighting towards users with high average karma, time decay, etc. it's hard if not impossible for me to infer whether these comments are good or bad according to the community.
In other words, in this thread there are 55 comments where I have no idea what the community thinks, and since they're all children to other comments they might show up anywhere in the thread. I have no way of parsing these comments without reading the whole thread through, including all the fluff.
The comments that are replies to comments with 3 or more replies count to 48. This means that in this thread more than half of the comments might as well have been without votes. It makes no difference - you can't see the vote, the comments doesn't rise to the top since there isn't anywhere to rise to, and it might appear anywhere on the page.
This begs the question: If you can't see the votes and can't parse out the interesting information inferred by these why have voting at all? I'm encouraged to read through the whole thing. Voting is then just a token gesture with no real effect. And then you're back to newsgroups...
The alleged weighting of comments within a thread is a complete failure because of that exact reason. I actually get a headhache from the frustration of knowing that weighting is done so I have to take into account the size of the thread to decide if something deserves my special attention. What a pain.
I just counted how many replies there are to each comment on this page and this is the result:
21 replies: 1 thread (main thread)
13 replies: 1 thread
6 replies: 1 thread
5 replies: 1 thread
3 replies: 1 thread
2 replies: 8 threads
1 reply: 39 threads
That means the 39 comments that are the only comment in a thread I have no idea whether they're good or bad, save my own judgement. The threads that have 2 replies don't fare much better: Since there's weighting towards users with high average karma, time decay, etc. it's hard if not impossible for me to infer whether these comments are good or bad according to the community.
In other words, in this thread there are 55 comments where I have no idea what the community thinks, and since they're all children to other comments they might show up anywhere in the thread. I have no way of parsing these comments without reading the whole thread through, including all the fluff.
The comments that are replies to comments with 3 or more replies count to 48. This means that in this thread more than half of the comments might as well have been without votes. It makes no difference - you can't see the vote, the comments doesn't rise to the top since there isn't anywhere to rise to, and it might appear anywhere on the page.
This begs the question: If you can't see the votes and can't parse out the interesting information inferred by these why have voting at all? I'm encouraged to read through the whole thing. Voting is then just a token gesture with no real effect. And then you're back to newsgroups...