There's also a minor personality-cult voting phenomenon at work here. It may just be because some HNers follow the comment threads of high-score or celebrated

There's also a minor personality-cult voting phenomenon at work here. It may just be because some HNers follow the comment threads of high-score or celebrated HNers, but I've noticed some people do get a lot more upvotes for mundane comments than I would expect. On the other side, there is social aspect - I know a lot of HNers just by their usernames here; knowing a little of the writer's context makes a comment more relevant and interesting. Perhaps it's worth a short experiment? What if there were a way of identifying within a thread which comments were by the same person?