How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of relying on a "score"?
Because sometimes a comment reaffirms or conflicts with my evaluation and it's useful to have a weight assigned to that.
Because the world has enough people who make their own evaluation and refuse to change their opinion regardless of overwhelming evidence.
And what makes you think that the "majority vote" on them will be correct?
Most often, it's the majority that doesn't have the necessary foundation.
Do they work that well there, or do they make the forums a competition for points and popular comments, in other words a popularity contest?
There might be valid reasons to remove it (it hurts the community, it leads to negative behavior, .... I forget why they took it off).
But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less. Then you have the option to weigh it as you see fit, including ignoring it.
It could be an extra piece of disinformation, which can make it more difficult to evaluate.
I suppose I'd like it if there was no way to sort. What happens on Reddit is that such comments easily bubble to the top, and they're often wrong, or just making a silly joke rather than being informative.
You can be an ignoramus in an echo chamber, or be the world expert who doesn't come here too often
Of course, the whole problem is that this reflects back on itself. Such that a highly upvoted comment will be upvoted by a person who values popularity too much, whereby he thus alters the very property he used to judge whether or not he should alter the property in the first place. So some people's over-reliance on popularity destroys the usefulness of the reading for everyone else.
Classic observer effect.