I no longer read comments. Points acted as an editor's cue on high quality content to read. Maybe more good comments are produced now, but it's no longer possible to find them without reading everything.
This exactly. I've found that I read less comments and skim over them because it's hard to differentiate the good view points from the rest. I know the most voted comments should float to the top but not having points just makes the discussions less interesting to me.
Would ordering the comments based on points solve this? Ie. highest scoring comment at top.
They are in part. The comments are ranked by votes and time and probably some other mechanisms pg implemented. I think the reddit hot method might be better.
I'll upvote this as well. I would prefer the points system back in place.