thread ranking is useful and doesn't increase addictiveness

I do agree that karma increases addictiveness and adds little value; I can see it being useful for certain permissions (so new accounts can't do thinks like downvoting), but it could just not be visible to the user; then there's no motivation to "increase my karma"

> thread ranking is useful and doesn't increase addictiveness

Can you please elaborate on what you find useful about thread-ranking? It's an anti-feature that only serves to increase addictiveness (by making top-level comments into a competition) and make it impossible to reload an active discussion and find your place again, in my opinion.

I find it useful because when browsing a post, you have the most upvoted or commented on at the top. I don't see how it increases top-level comment competition unless commenters are trying to get their comment up to the top? I think if you hide the karma, and that would also including hiding how many upvotes/downvotes your comment got, then you can't really track the "competition" and makes it much less competitive (and potentially addictive).

(I do see your point about not being able to keep your place, though I don't systematically go through all comments in a post -- or very rarely -- more just quickly browse for things that catch my attention, interesting info, etc.)