I think no comment points is fine, but in the case where there are no points I think you need to have a more accurate comment ranking system on the page. While

I think no comment points is fine, but in the case where there are no points I think you need to have a more accurate comment ranking system on the page. While having gravity to pull comments down is perfectly reasonable when points are displayed (because users can still look at the points and pick out old but valuable comments), without points the most important indication of comment quality is based on the ordering on comments. Also, perhaps it would be useful to still display comment points in single-view? It would prevent eye-balling a comment, but would still allow you to view a comment score with a little extra effort. I am aware this could provide preferential treatment to comments already on the top of the page but with the influx of new users the most important thing to prevent is a deluge of mediocre comments, not necessarily the dearth of exceptional comments.