For me personally, there's nobody I automatically upvote. There are a few people who get the benefit of the "PG effect" in that I automatically associate their name with specific domain expertise and give them the benefit of the doubt within that domain.

What I have found is that writing comments that get upvotes provides valuable feedback about the mechanics of writing comments that get upvotes - just as writing downvoted comments provides feedback (more quickly). Writing one good comment increases the likelihood of writing another one - writing bad comments, also increases the likelihood of good comments via downvotes.

HN provides editorial feedback in a form other than LOL's - comments and votes. Editorial feedback is a proven way to improve writing, and improving writing is the surefire way to get higher comment scores.

I agree, i would be very interested to see the effect of hiding usernames (an ID that lasted only for the thread), I bet it would distribute points significantly differently.

There is also the timing aspect however; habitual commenter are more likely to be in early to a thread.

And it's much easier to get upvotes when you're one of the first posters in a comments thread -- others are more likely to upvote you instead of writing their own comment.

If you see upvotes (U) as a product of the number of people viewing HN at a specific point in time (V) and the percentage of people who will upvote the post (Q) multiplied by the number of points in time (T) during which the post is viewable, we find U=VQT.

We can increase U by posting when V is highest, by posting comments when the most people are visiting HN. We can increase U by increasing the % of people who like the post, which usually means writing a high-quality comment. We can increase U by increasing T, the amount of time the post is available, simply by posting it earlier.

It's also easier to get downvotes as the first poster.

Thus comment quality is still the long term determinate. Particularly, now that snark and meanness are less acceptable, more thoughtful comments are required.

This is why I stopped reading MetaFilter comments; it was the same people getting upvoted simply because they had been upvoted before with little to do with the quality or even correctness of their comment. If they came into a post with an opposing view than the previous posters, it all of a sudden became an apology fest and comments began skewing to that user's perspective. When I saw the effect it was having on propagating misinformation and misconceptions, I had to put the keyboard down and walk away.

It's why 4chan, for all its ills, is still one of the best places to find really creative insight.

That's an interesting idea, but I don't think that's always the case. Sure, I recognize names like tptacek on occasion, but I frequently read (and upvote) a good comment, and only later realize who wrote it. I've even up-voted several interesting things in the same thread because they present information well, with connections or information that I might not have drawn, and then realized they were all by the same person.

I suspect the styling on the site, which presents non-comment bits in a lighter grey color, helps to de-emphasize the authors' identities in favor of the comments themselves.

I've been here for a little while now and there are many usernames that I know, but that never influence my upvotes, it might influence how much trust I put into what is said, but not my upvotes.