[maddalab]

I skim through the points, both on stories and discussions to decide which ones to read. As the size of the community has grown, I believe, probably mistakenly, that the points are more closely related to domain names on submissions and user names on comments, rather than the quality of the comment.

I tend to read some comments based on user names, irrespective of the points, for a few users, raganwald being one, primarily because I have read pretty much everything he has written and find it interesting more often than not. Even in cases where his comments has garnered few points, I have found the comment worth while. So I can understand the tendency to up vote comments based on user names.

Having said that, I vote for display of points and the hiding of user names. I would like comments to stand up for themselves rather than for the user posting the comments.