Isn't the ideal outcome of all this a site where the comment threads are worth reading in full instead of skimming?

If there are so many skimmable comments in a thread that not having points gets to be annoying because you have to sift...well, then the experiment has failed.

But if on the other hand there are just plain fewer comments, which does seem like a possible outcome in the mid-range, and those comments are of higher quality...well, experiment has succeeded!