comment scores used to be shown, but that resulted in people being influenced to vote up or down based on how many other people voted it up and down, or if some

comment scores used to be shown, but that resulted in people being influenced to vote up or down based on how many other people voted it up and down, or if someone fell below zero, they got piled on. HN tries to encourage judging something by its content, and hence has removed or de-emphasized things that are used as proxy, such as # of points, the seniority of the user, whether user has high ave points, etc. So in some ways, you have to read through most things. If it's up high, then that means it's a combination of being very new and it being upvoted. Generally, by the time a convo has settled, the most upvoted threads are up top.