I'm experimenting with not displaying comment scores. The orange dot is an alternate way to help users find high-scoring comments. More details here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979
Anyways, have definitely noticed a distinct difference in how I read thread. Instead of skimming scores, I now skim text.
1. You used to pay more attention to scores than to text? (i.e., "I used to skim the score to see if I wanted to read the comment, but now I skim the text.")
2. You used to pay more attention to text than you do now? (i.e., "I used to skim scores, then read text more carefully, but now I just skim text and move on.")
3. Something else entirely?
If the idea is to not show the the information the scores represent, then don't show it, even abstracted as little dots. If we do want the information, just show the scores.
I've been experimenting with various ways of indicating high scoring comments.
At the moment I use an orange dot after the time.
At one point I tried giving all comments initial dots, and turned them red when
the comment had a high score.