I find, however, that reading subcomments thoroughly is the one and only way to know which are gems and which are just popular cheap shots. There is no royal road to learning mathematics,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road#A_Metaphorical_.E2.8...
and there is no way to get good information out of written material except by reading it carefully.
After edit: for readers who haven't seen all this before, here is historical background on why Hacker News changed the interface to not showing publicly the karma score of each comment about half a year ago. The site founder, pg, asked for suggestions on how to "stave off decline of HN" in a thread he opened 197 days ago.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696
He then announced and experiment of not showing comment karma scores 189 days ago,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333
noting that he might change settings back and forth as the experiment continued. 186 days ago he opened a simple yes/no poll about the experiment
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039
and 180 days ago he replied to a question with a preliminary report on how voting behavior has changed,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465271
and now today he has said that he is satisfied with the results of the experiment. He runs the site, and I defer to his judgment about how to run the site, but I must say that I agree that the site has improved since visible comment karma scores were turned off. I can still see MY OWN comment karma scores, and so there is still a reason for readers to vote--to guide the behavior of other people posting comments so that the site guidelines
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
are fulfilled in letter and in spirit and this is a thoughtful, civil community.
Without, I have to read everything, including these 'popular cheap shots'. And as many have stated (but i can't really quantify-- because i can't see how many people are voting them up!) there isn't the time or the inclination to read everyone's posts.
-Those who read every post & up/down-vote each one on its merit.
-Those who scan the page quickly & read the comments with the highest votes.
The problems is, how do you tell which kind of user is voting when comes to ranking a comment? I would argue that a vote from someone who just scans the top rated comments is less useful than a vote from someone who has read the whole thread. The chance of gems being left languishing in a corner decreases with many eyes hunting for good content.
By being the second type of user you are essentially out-sourcing your opinion of a comment to the crowd and assuming everyone else is not doing the same thing.
Do you also believe that employers should spend a few days with each applicant before making a hiring decision? Would Amazon be better without product ratings? You could apply your argument to this situation and say that Amazon is better off without ratings because the best products may not get rated.
Services like Google, Reddit, Facebook, and Amazon owe much of their tremendous success to the fact that they provide users with effective screening mechanisms for the internet. We all benefit from lower information processing costs.
(Once upon a time I would just upvote, but that is now of limited usefulness in signifying agreement.)