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>> (or perhaps only hidden until after you vote but I don't see why they need to be there period)

That's an interesting point--why does every site need to quantify for the user the particular score of a comment? Why not indicate popularity by simply ordering the comments?

Is it a trust issue?

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Karma -> karma whoring -> pageviews -> profit?

Slashdot no longer displays numeric karma and you can disable display of comment scores.

You could also give other clues besides ordering - without revealing the numbers 'in your face'.

What sort of other clues?

For example color-shading. While it may still be possible to re-extract numbers from the colors --- psychological colors may have another effect than numbers.

Or perhaps something like Nethack does: http://www.steelypips.org/nethack/pray.html#p0

That's sort of like what Slashdot does for karma. "Karma: Excellent"

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