Ask PG: Is there any chance we're going to get comment points back soon?

Points next to the comments serve a much larger purpose than just organizing the discussion. They also [hopefully] assign value to things that people are saying.

Somebody saying "mysql is a perfectly fine database for most applications" with 5 points, and somebody saying "mysql is a perfectly fine database for most applications" with 150 points mean different things.

The first one means that somebody is voicing their opinion, and that people generally don't disagree with with them. The second means that somebody is voicing their opinion, and that a big chunk of the community agrees.

It's like seeing points next to the articles. A top-of-the-page article with 120 points and a top-of-the-page article with 1000 points are two different things.

To me, the comment points are a valuable bit of information.

Fellow HNers: thoughts? (If I missed a previous discussion about this, could somebody link me to it?)