Thanks, though I wasn't specifically suggesting it was an issue. I was only answering the question asked of me factually and the fact is that, yes, it does change my behavior in some ways to not have comment scores visible. However, I do not feel I have sufficient information at this point in time to draw conclusions or make value judgments in terms of "this is a good thing" or "this is a bad thing" or even "this is what is good about it and this is what is bad about it". (I personally like engaging people in conversation. Although I am aware that concerns about signal-to-noise are very valid concerns, I have long been baffled by people who join discussion lists/forums and then loudly complain about people talking too much. So I am not yet ready to say, yea, verily, stating agreement in place of or in addition to upvoting is inherently a bad thing.)