The aim here isn't to bow to the demands of users, but to maintain the quality of discussion on the site. Seeing comment scores can easily lead to disproportio

The aim here isn't to bow to the demands of users, but to maintain the quality of discussion on the site. Seeing comment scores can easily lead to disproportionate scores as the ones with high scores are read more and consequently voted up more. Many people may skip over new comments in favour of getting straight to the top scoring ones. I assume this is the rationale here.