I upmodded your post because it already had +9!

I wonder what would happen on this site if the comments and stories were still sorted by points but the actual number was hidden (or perhaps only hidden until after you vote but I don't see why they need to be there period).

That would completely change how I vote. I vote by comparing a post's score to the amount I would give it if I could pick a value. If they're significantly different, I vote accordingly.

If you're really curious checkout Perlmonks.org. It's been around for a decade and has consistently maintained a community that more closely resembles this site than any other I've seen. Blind voting has been in use there for a very long time and has worked quite well. You're also alloted a limited number of points per day based on your karma (XP) level.

>> (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?

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"

It seems like in this case we have a temporal error. A popular movie generated buzz now and skewed a result that people pronounce loosely as of all time.

Batman might be the best movie out recently but in 2 years time, it will be a dim and fading memory while the Godfather will retain its appeal as it has already proven that it can.

IMDB just needs a temporal filter to keep the latest trend from skewing the universal result.

But it only takes 1 spoiler to publicize the results to ruin it for most everyone else.